
THE LIBRARY* 1789 
Class.JLJ. 



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RETROSPECT 



OF A LONG LIFE: 



FROM l8l5 TO 1883. 



«. ^ v-BY 

S^O'HALL, F. S. A. 

A MAN OF LETTERS BY PROFESSION. 



1 History may be formed from permanent monuments and records, but lives can 
only be written from personal knowledge, which is growing every day less and less 
and in a short time is lost for ever." — Dr. Johnson. 

" Great men have been among us— hands that penned, and tongues that uttered, 
wisdom." — Wordsworth. 



NEW YORK: 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 

I, 3, AND 5 BOND STREET. 
I883. 






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54 



INTRODUCTION. 



In this " Retrospect of a Long Life," I submit to my readers the 
history of a career that has been full and varied, as well as long. I 
have lived in eventful times : rather, perhaps, as an observer than an 
actor. I am like the waiter who, at a well-furnished table, will take 
better note of the guests than he who is numbered among them. I 
have matter to record that would have been passed by unheeded of 
those who enjoyed seats of honor at the feast. 

I write almost entirely from memory — I have kept no journal of 
any kind ; the undestroyed letters that remain to me are few ; and 
for dates I shall generally have to refer to publications of the period 
I am dealing with. These pages will therefore be, in all strictness, 
" Recollections." 

At no period of my life, until one comparatively recent, did I 
foresee a time when, by writing of the events I had witnessed and 
the people I have known, I could produce a work that might be of 
benefit to the world. If I think otherwise now, it is because the con- 
viction has been, in a measure, forced upon me ; and should the 
reader derive either pleasure or profit from the perusal of these 
pages, he will owe it to the suggestion and liberality of Mr. Appleton, 
of New York. 

At the beginning of my task, I am warned by a knowledge of 
numerous failures in the forms of " Reminiscences," " Memoirs," and 
" Autobiographies " — "Diaries" more especially — of the errors into 
which writers of such works are so liable to fall. Few books of the 
kind have appeared in the years over which my experience extends, 
that would not have been considerably improved by being materially 



IV INTRODUCTION. 



I 



abridged. "Forewarned is forearmed." I shall strive not to class 
my own volumes among these over-burdened leviathans. 

If anybody accuse me of egotism, he will do me injustice. Cer- 
tainly, the pronoun of the first person will predominate in these 
pages : its employment can not be avoided ; for though the work is 
in no sense an Autobiography, these, as the reader will, I hope, bear 
in mind, are my recollections, and there must necessarily be much 
concerning myself. I shall, however, labor rather to keep in the 
background than to thrust myself forward — retiring out of sight 
whenever my narrative permits. None the less, I shall in every in- 
stance write as I think. I earnestly hope that in avoiding arrogance 
I shall eschew affectation and pretense. 

What the critics will say of my book I can not foretell ; nor have 
I the anxiety regarding the matter that might beset a younger man. 
I have arrived at that period of life when indifference takes the place 
of hope ; and do not write with a view to " golden opinions " when I 
say that, though I have, I think, reviewed the works of fifty thousand 
persons — authors and artists — I have ever striven to " do my spiriting 
gently," to be considerately generous rather than severely just ; bear- 
ing constantly in mind that "ten censure wrong for one who'writes 
amiss "—to have had always pleasure in giving pleasure, and pain 
in giving pain. 

I have no intention to introduce or interpolate political matter. 
No doubt my Conservative principles will occasionally sway the pros 
and cons ; but I shall study to avoid advocacy of any creed relig- 
ious or political ; there are " fighters " enough, on either side, to ren- 
der it unnecessary that I should descend into the arena. 

It will be obvious that I do not mean to repeat in this Retrospect 
what I have published in the " Book of Memories " ; * but several 
great men and women have left earth since it was written : of them 
I shall give such notices as I can call to mind, and refer, though to a 
limited extent, to others of the band of immortals I have known, 
altering the manner as well as the matter, and largely abridging ; for 
in the one case my Recollections were Memoirs ; as I give them now, 
they are for the most part sketches, yet not, as I think, less interest- 
ing to the general reader. 



* 



" The Book of Memories " of great men and women of the age, from personal 
acquaintance, published originally in the Art Journal and enlarged as a volume in 
1867. 



INTRODUCTION. v 

In composing the chapters that will follow, I shall strive to bear con- 
stantly in mind that I am writing principally for the grandchildren of 
the men and women who flourished when I began life. Without such 
stimulus, indeed, I should shrink from my task — deterred by the 
thought that much of what I have to relate will, to my contempora- 
ries, appear commonplace. To their sons' sons, however, I may, I 
trust, be able to communicate much that may interest, enlighten, and 
instruct. The Retrospect extends over more than sixty years ; and 
a dispassionate survey makes me pronounce it rather encouraging 
than depressing. My life has been, on the whole, a happy life ; ac- 
tive, busy, and I dare add, useful. I shall not be visited by any very 
stinging self-reproach, as the years and incidents of a long life pass 
in review before me, and forms and faces of old familiar friends rise 
up at the mystic call of memory. 

No doubt I shall wish to make my readers think well of me : no 
doubt that feeling will largely guide me in all I write ; but it will, I 
trust, be far from self-laudation and self-glorification — sins that 
would be instantly detected, to be followed by condemnation — from 
which a mind, but lightly influenced by right, would instinctively 
shrink. But, as I have said, I shall write as I feel ; and trust for 
ultimate judgment to a belief that I have earnestly desired to be use- 
ful in my generation, to say what may encourage and stimulate to 
ways of honorable labor, duty to God and justice to man. Let me 
hope, at the outset of my work, I may not be guilty of presumption, 
and that no such verdict will have been pronounced against me at 
its close. 

In a word, I shall regard myself here more as an editor than an 
author, desirous to cull, digest, and arrange all I can find, or think 
of, that can interest readers, so making the Past a teacher of the 
Future. 



RETROSPECT OF A LONG LIFE. 



RECOLLECTIONS . 
OF THINGS THAT HAVE BEEN. 

I was born in the year 1800 ; thus, when joy-bells rang for the 
victory at Trafalgar, I was a child of five years old ; when glad tid- 
ings came of the crowning triumph at Waterloo, a boy of fifteen ; 
and when George III died, I was a young man. I have reported in 
the old House of Commons such " giants " as Canning and Brougham; 
George Stephenson opened his first line of railway some years after 
I became associated with the Press ; and the Reform Bill of 1832 
found me on the threshold of what is commonly considered middle 
age. I have seen many changes : I trust my readers will permit me 
to pause, before entering on my Personal Recollections, to talk about 
some of them. Old Time and I have been so long acquainted that 
it does not seem presumptuous to hope there may be matter of inter- 
est in details concerning work I have seen him do. 

Beginning at one of the lowest rungs of Memory's ladder, I carry 
my readers back to a time when the Tinder-Box was a household 
god. The " Tinder-Box " was the precursor of the lucifer match 
that can be lit in an instant ; and, when quiescent, is inclosed in a 
case so pretty that it may be accepted as a graceful gift. Fifty years 
ago the tinder-box was as indispensable as was, and is, the tea-kettle 
that still sings on the hob — of the kitchen. 

As an old acquaintance, the tinder-box is worth describing. It 
was, more or less, coarsely ornamental, and of varied forms. Ordi- 
narily, it was an oblong wooden box some six or eight inches long 
and three or four in width, and was divided into two parts by a par- 
tition. In one of these was fitted a loose lid with a central knob, to 
drop in as a " damper " on the tinder ; and in the other were kept 
the flint, steel, and bunches of brimstone matches. The "tinder" 
was scorched or half-burned linen rag. The flint and steel being 
struck together, emitted sparks, and then, as soon as a spark had 
fallen upon and ignited the tinder, the brimstone end of a ' match " 



2 OIL LAMPS. 

was applied to it, and lit. The matches were thin slips of deal, five 
or six inches long and perhaps a quarter of an inch wide, cut to a 
point at each end, and dipped in melted brimstone ; they were 
hawked about the country by itinerant venders. The fumes of the 
sulphur emitted a scent by no means pleasant to the olfactory nerves; 
in fact, the stench was strong enough to find its way from the kitchen 
to the attic of a lofty mansion ! From the match thus ignited, a 
candle was lit — of mutton-fat usually, of " molds " where greater 
cost could be afforded. There were never candles on the table 
without the snuffer-tray and snuffers. It is almost as necessary to 
describe the snuffers as the tinder-box, for they are nearly as much 
of the past ; when match-girls were members of a large profession 
instead of subjects for artists who would picture the olden time. 

I can imagine Messrs. Bryant & May looking down with scorn 
on the ancient tinder-box, and Mr. Child on that invariable helper 
and consoler of the sick-room, in cottages or hospitals— the little 
"farthing rushlight," comparing their achievements with the dips 
and molds, ancestors of the gas-burners of the present and the elec- 
tric light— of the future. 

I well remember the Link Boys — and have seen them attendants 
at gay parties — waiting to light the guests home. The link was 
formed of thread wisps, and carried by the " boys " to light the way 
for either carriages or pedestrians ; on arrival it was quenched by its 
own extinguisher, generally placed on the railings near the hall door. 
A few of them are still left in our grand old squares of London ; 
and in Russell Street, Bath, where I lately lodged, two yet remain as 
relics of ancient grandeur in the venerable city of King Bladud. 

In those days Lighting by Gas was a novelty that was making 
its way into public favor slowly and against a furious storm of oppo- 
sition, and through the unsafe, miserably lit streets of London tot- 
tered at night feeble old creatures with staves and lanterns who were 
by a fiction styled " watchmen," but whom the public knew best as 
" Charlies." They came mostly from the workhouse, and their shel- 
ter between sunset and sunrise was a narrow rickety sentry-box, to 
overturn which, with its aged and decrepit occupant, was a favorite 
sport of all the " bloods " in town. Lamp-lighting was a profession, 
but the streets were so " dark with light," that on the opposite side, 
if the street were at all broad, you could not tell whether it was a 
man or a woman who was passing. 

Familiar to me in my youth were the old Oil Lamps, those makers 
of darkness visible in our thoroughfares which the now sovereign 
king, Gas, has displaced. It is strange but true that one of the most 
bitter opponents to the introduction of gas was Sir Walter Scott, who 
denounced the "pestilential innovation" in a public speech. But 
the northern wizard speedily recognized the magic of the new light- 



MAIL-COACHES. 3 

giver, and, changing with the times, took a prominent part in the 
formation of a gas company — causing Abbotsford to be lit with " the 
dangerous and deleterious air." 

Talking of Light, imagine a dreamer sixty years ago declaring 
that he would take the sun into his service, and by its aid procure a 
portrait of any person, or view of any locality, so accurate as to be 
sure of invariable recognition. He would have been looked upon as 
mentally aberrated, and his project classed with a scheme to extract 
sunbeams from cucumbers, and cast them upon a bed of roses. I 
was the fifth person in England whose outer semblance was taken by 
the process of Daguerre. It is now nothing more than a thin plate of 
metal on which a few marks are barely discernible. Photographs on 
paper followed not long afterward. In 1847, Fox Talbot, whose 
name designated the process known as " Talbotype," gave me seven 
thousand impressions to introduce into The Art Journal. I have 
been examining some of these lately ; they are faded and gone — 
pieces of slurred paper, nothing more. All know what photographs, 
not only of persons but of things, are now. They are permanent. 
There is hardly a place in the world that is not thus made familiar 
to our eyes ; scarce a person of note whose features are not as well 
known to us as are those of our most intimate friends ; the poorest 
artisan may delight his household by a few pence expended with an 
itinerant photographer ! Photography is surely one of the marvels 
— not to say miracles — of the age, the interest and value of which it 
would be impossible to exaggerate. 

Police Guardians. — For the detection of crime and the capture 
of criminals, the Metropolis had its " Bow Street runners," described 
in some of the earlier works of Dickens. I have had many a chat 
with Townsend, the most notorious thief-taker of his time, who had 
often received a pat on the shoulder from his " friend " the Prince 
of Wales. Townsend was a short, smart, active little man, who wore 
a flaxen bob-wig — his like may be seen at Madame Tussaud's. He 
had passed his best days when I knew him. What stories he might 
have told ! I wonder if in our well-trained " Constabulary " there 
are half a dozen half as good at exposing or detecting crime — or pre- 
venting it ; as one of them expressed it to me, " taking off the fuse 
before the shell explodes." 

Mail-Coaches. — The King's lieges traveled mostly in mail- 
coaches, the guards of which carried arms, for, though the days of 
highwaymen were nearly over, those of footpads yet flourished, and 
robbing a coach was not wholly a crime of the past.* 

* I was traveling in Ireland (it must have been about the year 1818) between 
Cork and Skibbereen, when I witnessed a stoppage of the mail to rob it. The 



4 MAIL-COACHES. 

But if mail-coach traveling had its drawbacks, it had some pleas- 
ures that a railway journey lacks. True, the inside passenger had 
to pass hour after hour in a miserably cramped position ; if he man- 
aged to sleep, he was very likely to be awakened by some jolt that 
pitched him into an opposite passenger's arms.* The outsides were, 
of course, exposed to all elemental ills. But how pleasant were the 
fresh morning air, the jovial toot-toot of the guard's horn, and the 
exhilarating gallop of the horses ; how grateful the stoppages for 
meals — above all, for breakfast — at primitive and picturesque coun- 
try inns ! Alas ! that supreme enjoyment was generally all too brief, 
for just as the passengers had fairly settled themselves to the well- 
spread table, in would come the coachman with the terrible an- 
nouncement, " Coach ready, ladies and gemmen," and with a growl 
and a grumble up would start the company and rush to take their 
seats, leaving the meal paid for but only half consumed. My mem- 
ory does not go so far back as that of Sir Walter Scott, who, in the 
novel of " St. Ronan's Well," pictured the mail-coaches of his time, 
and referred to the mounted postmen of a not much earlier period, 
who carried letters from one end of Scotland to the other at the rate 
of thirty miles a day. A model mail-coach may be seen nowadays 
every summer morning in Piccadilly ; but it is a fancy sketch ; and, 
occasionally, an aristocratic copy of it is encountered in Hyde Park, 
driven, perhaps, by a peer of the realm, who is prouder of being a 
skillful whip than he is of his Norman blood, and of his four-in-hand 
than of his seat in the Upper House. 

In 1816, I traveled by a greatly improved coach from London to 
Bristol in twenty hours. It started in the afternoon and arrived 
at mid-day of the day succeeding. At that time coach-traveling at 
the rate of four miles an hour was not considered slow. 

Sometimes experienced travelers would prove too much for coach- 
man and landlord both. I remember a case in point. When all the 
other passengers had hurried out and grumblingly taken their places, 

road was effectually barricaded by a huge tree, passage was impossible, and a dozen 
men with blackened faces speedily surrounded the coach. To attempt resistance 
would have been madness ; the guard wisely abstained from any, but surrendered 
his arms ; the priming was removed, and they were returned to him. The object 
of the gang was limited to acquiring the mail-bags ; they were known to contain 
some writs against a gentleman very popular in the district. These being extracted, 
the coach pursued its way without further interruption. The whole affair did not 
occupy five minutes. It was subsequently ascertained, however, that there had 
been a further purpose. The gentleman had that day paid his rent — all in bank- 
notes ; when the agent desired to mark them there was neither pen nor ink in the 
house ; the mail-bag contained these notes. Where they eventually found their way 
was never proved, but it was certain they did not reach the landlord, whose receipt 
was in the hands of his tenant, duly signed. 

* It is an old story of the " inside " gentleman who, desiring to get out from 
the coach, was asked by a lady why he wished to do so, and answered, " Oh, only 
to stretch my legs !" "Pray don't do that," she said ; "I am sure they are long 
enough already ! " 



LONDON. 5 

one man was seen sipping his tea and quietly eating his toast. 
"Coach starting, sir," quoth the landlord. But I sha'n't start," re- 
sponded the traveler, • until I have eaten my egg, which I can't do 
until I find a spoon." " A spoon ! " exclaimed Boniface, and in great 
alarm scanned the breakfast-table. Not a spoon was there ; rush- 
ing out he stopped the coach and insisted on every passenger being 
searched. After much time had been vainly occupied in this way, 
out stalked the traveler and quietly took his seat, submitting to be 
searched also. Just as the coach started he called out to the land- 
lord, " You may as well look inside the tea-pot," and there, sure 
enough, the dozen silver spoons were found. 

The last time I traveled by a mail-coach was to Cambridge be- 
fore the Great Eastern line was finished. Half the journey was by 
railway ; the other half by coach. It was a day of breeze and sun- 
shine. The coachman was one of the last of the old race. I mounted 
upon the box-seat and sat by his side ; at the crack of his whip, off 
went four fine horses at a spanking pace. I rubbed my hands with 
glee, and said, " What a delicious change from the hissing and howl- 
ing railroad I have left ! " The man looked at me with a glance of 
strong approval. The coach was going at the rate of twelve miles 
an hour, as I added, " And I'm sure this traveling is fast enough for 
any one ! " He looked at me again : " Eh ? " said he ; " them as 
wants to go faster, let 'em get out and run ! " 

Akin to this, is an incident that happened to me not long ago, 
when landed at the Quay at Kingstown. Up, as usual, ran the car- 
drivers ; each pressing me to let him convey me to Dublin, distant 
six miles. "Oh, no ! " I said; "I'm going by the railroad." One 
of them stared at me in astonishment, and exclaimed : " Well, I 
wonder at your honor ! you, an English gentleman, maybe for the 
first time in Ireland — that wouldn't rather be whisked up to Dublin 
in my nate little car, than be dragged up to Dublin at the tail of a taa- 
kettle ! " 

I have said that the days of highwaymen were over at the time 
of which I write, but that footpads still infested the more lonely 
roads. Indeed, to return to town after nightfall from such places as 
Hampstead and Blackheath inferred a walk attended with real dan- 
ger, and I well remember a somewhat popular tea-garden at Hamp- 
stead, the landlord of which, to reassure his customers, advertised in 
the papers and placarded on his walls an announcement that at con- 
venient distances on the route between the Heath and Tottenham 
Court Road he had posted " eight stout fellows armed with bludgeons 
for the protection of all persons who had tickets of admission to his 
establishment." 

Ancient city as London is, and great Metropolis though it has 
always been, the period of its most rapid and amazing increase is 



6 PILLIONS. 

about covered by my lifetime. The London of my boyhood knew 
Kensington as a village-like suburb, with fields and lanes that the 
ever-advancing tide of brick and mortar has since effaced ; fifty 
years ago there was a turnpike-gate at Hyde Park Corner. Where 
Eaton Square now stands there were pleasant, though lonely, fields, 
and walking in them sixty years ago I have whispered tender confi- 
dences to a beloved companion. Brixton and Islington, Hackney 
and Peckham — such names then called up thoughts of fertile mead- 
ows, that in summer waved with ripening corn or were starred with 
innumerable daisies, and amid which stood veritable farm-houses. 
Many times — but that is not so very long ago — I have gathered 
blackberries, in a rustic lane, through which a muddy stream mean- 
dered, on the site of Cromwell Road and the South Kensington 
Museum. Old General Oglethorpe told Samuel Rogers he had shot 
snipe where Conduit Street, New Bond Street, now stands ; and 
Samuel Rogers related that fact to me. When Lord Erskine lived 
in Gower Street, he grew peaches in his garden, and had from his 
drawing-room window an uninterrupted view of Highgate Hill. The 
painter, Mulready, showed me a sketch of a gravel-pit, and asked 
me where I supposed it was painted, adding, " On the site of Russell 
Square." 

The Parks. — Do those who walk or ride about Hyde Park and 
Kensington Gardens, and enjoy the singing of birds, the trees full 
of blossoms, the rich and varied banks and borders of flowers, the 
graceful fountains and delicious views that make one oblivious of 
London — above all, the merry voices of children delighting in the 
air that gives them health and pleasure — do any such contrast their 
aspect to-day with what it was even forty years ago ? Let them 
breathe a blessing on the memory of Sir Benjamin Hall, Lord Llan- 
over, who commenced the work that is now a vast delight as well as 
health-boon to the millions of the Metropolis. Who remembers the 
unwholesome swamps called Battersea Fields ? Compare them with 
Battersea Park, and be thankful. And not only there, for the densely 
populated district known as the East End has it luxury of which all- 
comers may partake ; other districts of the Metropolis will soon have 
theirs. All the leading cities and towns of Britain are thus endowed, 
in many cases resulting from the merciful thought and beneficent 
help of private individuals. Contrast these mighty boons with the 
tea-gardens of Sadler's Wells and Bagnigge Wells : even with stately 
Vauxhall, of fifty years ago. They were then the only places where 
the pure air of the country was to be enjoyed by London citizens 
and their families : games of skittles being the poor predecessors of 
the manly cricket. 

Pillions. — I would give something now to see a lady riding on a 
pillion, going to church behind her husband, or even her groom — as 



OMNIBUSES. j 

used to be the case so often in my boyhood. One may yet see, oc- 
casionally, the stone steps at the church gate — the " upping stones " 
— but the pillion must be sought for in old pictures. Sixty years ago 
at least a score of pillions might have been seen waiting for fair occu- 
pants, with attendant squires to help them to mount, when the ser- 
mon had been read and the benediction given. And in far more 
recent times than that, the farmer would bestride his sturdy cob, his 
wife mount the pillion behind him ; her basket of eggs and butter 
would be handed up to her, and away they would jog, comfortably, 
to market. 

We do hear now and then the pit-pat of the old " Patten " — 
never in the street, but occasionally in the yard, sometimes in the 
back-kitchen ; we look in vain for pattens in the church porch, where 
they used to be left until service was over. But though pattens have 
pretty nearly disappeared from among us, their name is still pre- 
served in London ; we have still existing a " Right Worshipful Com- 
pany of Patten Makers." * 

What would the manifold cape-coated Coachman of old times 
have said had he dreamed of the " Hansom " that dashes from Pic- 
cadilly to the Mansion House in less than twenty minutes ? What 
would the "jolly young waterman" say to the penny steamer, the 
rival of his " trim-built wherry " ? What would Captain Barclay have 
said to walking — not 1,000 miles in 1,000 hours (once a wonder of 
the world), but 2,500 miles in 1,000 hours ? What would the vener- 
able watchman — sole guardian of the night — have said could he have 
seen his smartly clad and active grandson — the policeman of the 
present day — here, there, and everywhere, his handy staff and dark 
lantern ready to act where thieves were likely to break in and steal ? 
Had Byron been asked to supplement his swim across the Hellespont 
by swimming from Dover cliffs to Calais pier, he would have as soon 
expected to see the promise of the old song verified — the "cow 
jumping over the moon ! " 

Omnibuses. — Who, when he steps into an omnibus and takes a 
drive of five or six miles for as many half-pence, remembers the days 
of the old hackney-coaches — lumbering vehicles, generally worn-out 
and " done with " carriages of gentry, to which two horses were al- 
ways attached — and the fat coachman, whose great-coat with half a 
dozen capes weighed a hundred-weight ? He would have considered 
four miles an hour at two shillings a mile hard driving and money 
hardly earned ! 

* Ladies always left their pattens in the church porch : it was a Sunday treat 
for reckless boys so to mix them — confusing the pairs — as to cause half an hour's 
delay after church to bring the pairs together so that each lady might have her 
own. 



8 NEWSPAPERS. 

Sea- Voyages. — And what an astounding revolution steam has 
wrought in long voyages ! Can the passenger who takes his berth in 
one of the magnificent ocean-steamers that now traverse the distance 
between Liverpool and New York in less than ten days — lately ac- 
complished in seven days — realize a time when passages of from sixty 
to sixty-five days were of constant occurrence, and when voyages of 
even twice that duration were not unheard of ? Were the States to 
appoint a minister to Japan, he would now traverse the distance be- 
tween Washington and Yokohama in less time than in 1820 it took 
General Cass to cross the Atlantic. The General had been for some 
time American Minister at the English Court ; and on his return 
journey it was his unhappy fate to be at sea between Portsmouth and 
New York no fewer than one hundred and fifteen days. Even Ire- 
land was in those days practically much farther off than America is 
now. A voyage there sometimes took a month between port and 
port ; in 1816, when I went by the sailing packet from Bristol to 
Cork, forty-two days of waiting had actually gone by before my feet 
were on the quay of " the beautiful city." Putting out and putting 
back, of course, included, but nobody dared risk the sleeping ashore. 

People of the present generation see nothing and know nothing 
of Sedan Chairs ; * but far into my time they were the usual modes 
of conveyance of ladies and gentlemen going to parties, balls, assem- 
blies, or the theatre, and were also employed in making calls, or 
" going shopping." The well-to-do had their own ; those who had 
them not could hire them, and at night they were accompanied by 
link-boys carrying burning torches. It was, literally, the body of a 
carriage just large enough to hold one person comfortably, without 
wheels, and was carried on poles passed through loops or staples, by 
two men — one in front, the other behind. The door was in front, 
and the vehicle was so constructed that the top would lift up by 
means of hinges. They are now things of the past — the private 
brougham or the public cab, and the Bath chair, being their substi- 
tutes. 

Newspapers. — In the days to which my recollection goes back a 
daily newspaper cost sevenpence, and the postage of a letter, which 
could only consist of a single sheet, made a terrible hole in a shilling ; 
if written on two pieces of paper, or even if a scrap were inclosed, 
double postage, often amounting to half a crown or more, was 
charged. Envelopes were entirely unknown : they were things in 
fiduro. Wafers had come to be looked upon as indignities ; to put 
a wafer on a letter was a thing seldom done, sealing-wax being 

* The " Sedan," which took its name from the town of Sedan in France, where 
they were first made, was introduced into England by Sir Saunders Duncombe, in 
1634. 



CLERG YMEN. g 

always used in writing to any person above the rank of a tradesman. 
The indignant protest of Lord Chesterfield will be remembered, 
" The rascal sent me his spittle." 

Then India-rubber was, as its name denotes, of value only to 
rub out pencil-marks ; gutta-percha was as little known as if it had 
been grown in one of the fixed stars ; and cocoanut-fiber a nuisance 
that would neither burn nor decay into manure. Now, thanks to 
the energy and enterprise of the late Mr. Treloar, we see what fifty 
years ago was considered useless rubbish converted into door-mats 
and many other things of a similar nature. The refuse of manufac- 
tories and workshops has become most useful and of great value. 
No doubt the matter has been fully treated and explained. 

Chloroform. — How large is the debt of humanity to those who 
brought chloroform to the relief of suffering, enabling the most im- 
portant and difficult operations in surgery to be effected without 
causing pain to the sufferer ! The theme is far too large for treat- 
ment here. 

Imported Water. — It is among the wonders of the age in which 
we live that water is brought to us by long journeys and long voy- 
ages, many hundred miles, to be drunk at small cost. I believe there 
are half a score of Continental springs that supply our tables ; and 
ice that was frozen in Wenham Lake, thousands of miles away, is 
now as common as potatoes were a few years ago. I remember 
what a foolish visionary he was thought who, about thirty years 
back, first advertised ice for sale. It is now a necessity rather than 
a luxury, and a score of lakes as big as that of Wenham go but a 
small way to satisfy our needs. 

Some twenty years ago, while resident for a season at the pretty 
and healthful baths of Nieuenahr, we used always to stop — during 
our drives — at the Apollinaris spring, to enjoy a draught of its de- 
licious water. He would have been a dreamer then who had fore- 
told that a time was near at hand when we might drink it at our 
dinner-tables in London city. 

Clergymen. — It became a sort of proverb that the " fool of the 
family " was to be " a parson," thus dedicating to the service of God 
one who was not likely to be of any service to man ; when clergy r 
men were not ashamed to practice minor vices, and only shrank from 
exposure of such as were opprobrious ; when rectors, canons, and 
even prelates, were more ambitious of distinction in the hunting-field 
than in the pulpit ; and not unfrequently pandered to rank in the 
closet where they should have called a sinner to repentance. This 



10 FACTORY SLAVES. 

is no exaggeration. I can gather much confirmatory evidence from 
those who go so far back in memory as sixty years.* 

Factory Slaves. — They were days when, in our Collieries 
and Factories, child-slaves labored from early morn till late night at 
tasks that killed them off before manhood or womanhood was reached ; 
or, if a hardy few survived, those years of horrid toil placed the 
stamp of premature age on faces that should have been those of 
primal youth. They were days when no law prevented Lancashire 
mill-owners from exacting fourteen and fifteen hours of monotonous 
toil daily from the tender frames of young children whose ages were 
sometimes barely half as many years ; when in Yorkshire collieries 
miserable little creatures under ten years old crawled along passages 
that sometimes were not more than two feet high, dragging trucks of 
coal by a chain attached to a girdle that went round their half-naked 
bodies, and often wore away the skin. Whatever may be the national 
evils of the present day, it is a happy thought that the laws of the 
country have removed this foul blot of child-slavery from the land, 
that in our factories are now to be found no miserable little serfs 
enduring a daily bondage of fifteen hours, and that even in our col- 
lieries sights such as those described in Parliament so late as 1842 
are now impossible. In that year Lord Ashley (the good Earl of 
Shaftesbury), addressing the House of Commons, thus depicted the 
condition of the children of either sex employed in Yorkshire pits : 

" The child has a girdle round the waist, to which is attached a chain that 
passes under the legs and is attached to the cart. He or she is obliged to 
pass on all-fours, and the chain passes under what therefore, in that posture, 
might be called the hind-legs, and thus they have to pass through avenues 
not so good as a common sewer." 

Said a witness, Robert North, examined before the Commissioners : " I 
went into the pit at seven years of age. When I drew by the girdle and 
chain the skin was broken and the blood ran down. If we said anything 
they would beat us. I have seen many draw at six. They must do it or be 
beat. They can not straighten their backs during the day." 

* I have heard a clergyman preach, his cassock hiding a red coat, so that at 
once, when his short and hurried sermon was over, he might be ready to mount 
and follow the hounds ! I knew a rector in Buckinghamshire (the living was his 
own, from which he could not be removed) who became the hero of the following 
incident : One bitterly cold Christmas-day, a congregation of a score of male attend- 
ants was gathered in his church ; after giving out a few prayers, he thus addressed 
his congregation : " Now, my lads, which will ye have, a sermon or a pint of ale? " 
After a brief consultation, one of them answered, " Yer Reverence, we'ed rather 
have the pint o' yale." " Well, then, come away." But an old man stood out for 
the sermon, until some one whispered into the ear of the parson, " Yer Reverence, 
offer him a quart." His Reverence took the hint. " Yaa," was the answer, " I'll 
go for a quart ! " And so the whole congregation trooped off to the Rectory, the 
flock drank their ale, and the pastor was spared the sermon. I was christened by 
a clergyman who, being in daily dread of bailiffs, had a tunnel made between the 
church and his house adjoining : his house he could guard against intrusion, and in 
the church he could not be arrested. 



THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. ZI 

Happily the past had its good as well as its evil ; and terrible as 
must have been the sum of human suffering in England in those 
days, there were true servants of God everywhere at work to lighten 
it ; in the Mrs. Fry and Wilberforce of that age we find the counter- 
parts of the Florence Nightingale and Lord Shaftesbury of ours. 
It is through legislation promoted by humane and earnest men that 
such crying evils as those referred to have been removed. 

The House of Commons. — In the year 1823 I was a Parliament- 
ary Reporter, and in that capacity attended many a debate in the 
old House of Commons, so long ago destroyed. Until recently I 
believed myself the oldest living member of the British Press, but I 
find that I was in error. Payne Collier, whose many valuable con- 
tributions to literature have made his name an honored one, and 
who is still laboring, informs me that if I am the " father," he must 
be the " grandfather," for that he was a worker in the Gallery of the 
House of Commons ten years before the date of which I write. He, 
therefore, may have reported the speeches of Curran and Sheridan, 
although my Recollections take me no further back than to the nights 
of debate when Canning was in his vigor, and Brougham in his 
prime.* 

There were other " giants " in both Houses, and I can not begin 
these Recollections better than by drawing on whatever fund of 
reminiscences I may preserve concerning them. The pre-eminent 
duty of a writer of such volumes as these is to tell his readers what 
few or none but he can tell, describing from personal knowledge the 
great men who flourished during the first quarter of the nineteenth 
century. Neither are there many — either among members, reporters, 
or the general public — who can recall, as I can, so far-gone a past, 
as to be enabled to picture from memory the old House of Com- 
mons, destroyed by fire in 1834.! It was dark : always so insuffi- 
ciently lit that on the back benches no one could read a paper, and 
so ill ventilated that few constitutions could long bear the unwhole- 
some atmosphere. So limited was the available space that three 
fourths only of the six hundred and fifty-eight gentlemen who rep- 
resented England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and Berwick-upon- 

* There are others yet living, I rejoice to say, whom I have the honor to name 
as my contemporaries : among them, the present Vice-Chancellor Bacon, who is 
two years my senior ; Charles Ross, who was my contemporary as reporter on the 
great newspaper — the oracle and teacher of the world — of which he is now one of 
the editors ; and John Byrne, who has been for more than half a century one of the 
conductors of a daily London newspaper. 

f On the 16th of October in that year, all London and its suburbs for many 
miles round saw the light. Turner painted the scene. Westminster Hall was 
saved with difficulty ; its destruction would have been a calamity indeed. The 
London Gazette of that date furnished all particulars, and it was ascertained that 
the fire originated in the burning of " exchequer tallies " in one of the stoves for 
heating the flues of the House of Lords. The loss was a gain. 



12 THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 

Tweed, were able to obtain seats, although the galleries right and 
left were thronged. Tiers of seats, to the number, I think, of five, 
rose gradually on either side from the floor, the upper row being 
under the galleries ; and any member who succeeded in " getting on 
his legs " was so cramped in that he could hardly move his limbs 
while addressing the House. The central space was tolerably large. 
At one end were the cross-benches on which independent members 
(i. e., such as were not avowedly attached to any party) seated them- 
selves, and at the other end sat the Speaker in a gilt and canopied 
easy-chair. On his right was the Treasury Bench, i. e., the bench on 
which sat the Ministers of the Crown and their most influential sup- 
porters ; behind and above were massed the Government adherents. 
On the Speaker's left were arrayed the leaders and members of the 
Opposition. The Strangers' Gallery held probably two hundred. 
No women were admitted — that is to say, none who were habited in 
the apparel of their sex, but I have frequently seen there ladies 
dressed in male attire. The fair sex were, however, allowed admit- 
tance to the " pigeon-holes " above the ventilator in the roof, from 
whence, through crevices, they might see and hear what was going 
on in the House. At the back of the Strangers' Gallery was the 
Reporters' Bench ; it was the very worst seat in the House, and if 
there had been a deliberate determination on the part of the Legis- 
lature to place in the way of reporting obstacles all but impossible to 
surmount, that determination could not by any possibility have been 
more successfully carried out. 

" Strangers " were admitted by written and dated orders from 
members, or by payment of half-crowns to the door-keepers, and it 
was not unusual on important occasions for applicants to have to 
wait in the lobby for hours on the chance of at length securing ad- 
mission ; often to learn, at last, that there was no room — the gallery 
having already been filled by unfair prearrangement with the door- 
keepers. In fact, it is almost impossible to conceive a place of 
public meeting more utterly unsuited to its purpose, or more un- 
worthy of a nation, where the destinies of that nation, for evil or for 
good, were to be decided by its representatives. I write only of the 
House of Commons, for the House of Peers, although mean enough, 
was comparatively a paradise. It had ample room, the air was 
seldom tainted by overcrowding, and it had an aspect, if not of dig- 
nity, at least of respectability. Midway between the throne and the 
bar was the woolsack, the seat of the Lord Chancellor, Speaker of 
the House. Below the bar was the space appropriated to the public, 
but there were no seats for strangers, and those who wished to hear 
the debates had perforce to stand during the whole time they re- 
mained. Such were our Houses of Legislature at the period of 
which I write. 

Although the buildings were in themselves mean, they derived 
dignity from the men who nightly assembled in them. Alas ! I can 



ELECTIONS. I3 

but exclaim with a sigh for the ravages Time has made, and a proud 
consciousness of the debt their country owes to the illustrious dead 
— " There were giants in those days ! " 

Such changes has Time wrought, that at the present day report- 
ers are better cared for than are the members themselves. From 
1823 to 1834 who of us would have built so incredible an air-castle 
as to have foretold a time when Parliamentary reporters would be 
provided not only with seats where they could see and hear, but 
actually with a separate apartment where notes might be transcribed, 
and — mirabile dictu — a dining-room and kitchen within the walls, and 
a smoking-room of their own ; besides a telegraph and telephone 
fitted within the House for their special use and convenience ? What 
a contrast to sixty years ago ! Is it not one that may well excite the 
lively gratitude of those who discharge the arduous duty of providing 
the public with faithful reports of the speeches in the House ? Nor 
has the public failed to be a great gainer by the change. The words 
"inaudible in the gallery " now seldom occur in a report : they were 
frequent enough then. 

Elections. — Sixty years ago were the days of Hustings and 
hard-fought Elections, the fighting being literally such — between 
bands of hired roughs in the pay of opposing candidates. They 
were days when to record a vote was often a matter involving peril 
to limb or even life, and when an unpopular candidate had frequently 
to beat a hasty retreat from the hustings under a shower of cabbage- 
stumps and brickbats, if not of even more unpleasant interruptions 
to his oratory.* 

It will be remembered that I write of the Parliaments that sat in 
the decade preceding the Reform Bill of 1832. To many, the details I 
give will seem like records of a prehistoric age : the time when " rotten 
boroughs " such as Gatton and Old Sarum were sacred props of the 
British Constitution, and duly returned representatives by means of an 
electorate of some four votes ; while Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, 
Bradford, Greenwich, and Brighton, as well as other great centers of 
population and industry, were without a single member ; when Brit- 
ish legislators bought and paid for " the most sweet voices " that sent 
them into the House of Commons ; when an election for a county 
required a clear fortnight to take the poll ; when polling-booths were 
filthier than butchers' shambles ; and when our " sacred liberties " 
were as much matters of barter, as notoriously for sale, as were the 
carriages that conveyed candidates to the hustings ! Not in the 

* I was reporting the proceedings at an election for Westminster, in Covent 
Garden Market, when a dead cat flung at the platform struck me in the face. It 
had been aimed, not at me, but at the unpopular candidate, who had dared to 
oppose the " beloved of the people." 



14 ELECTIONS. 

House, however. The time when Ministers openly purchased votes 
belongs to a period further back than that I recall. Bribery and 
corruption of that description were, happily, as completely absent 
from Parliament in those days as now ; and if every man had his 
price, it was not a money price : the honor of Parliamentary repre- 
sentatives was then, as now, in that way unscathed. 

While I am dealing with this subject, a few references to the 
means by which the political warfare of those days was mainly car- 
ried on may not be out of place. It is lamentable to think of the 
large number of once rich families that traced their descent from 
prosperity to poverty — to contested elections. There is good au- 
thority for believing that the election for Yorkshire in 1817 cost the 
three contending parties half a million of money, one of the candi- 
dates being William Wilberforce, whose expenses were, however, 
largely defrayed by subscription. It was stated by Mr. Bright at 
Birmingham, in 1866, that an election for Yarmouth had cost one of 
the candidates ^70,000. Lord Monson bought the "rotten bor- 
ough " of Gatton, with its one hundred inhabitants, for ^100,000 ; 
and the freemen of several boroughs regularly received ^100 each 
for their votes. It was the piteous but serious complaint of those 
of St. Albans, during a season of distress, that they had nothing else 
to sell ; and it was well known that often, in contested borough 
elections, a cabbage would be valued at five or ten pounds, and sold 
to the candidate accordingly ; while an anecdote is narrated of a 
certain " free and independent elector " who had the luck to buy for 
a shilling a litter of young pigs, which another " free and indepen- 
dent elector " had just sold for a hundred pounds ! " Mister Most 
is my master always," significantly replied a patriot of this stamp 
when asked by a candidate for his vote. 

I was present when a country Hodge tendered his vote for Mr. 

H , who was not a candidate at all, but was his landlord, and 

neither threats nor persuasions could induce him to vote for any 
other. 

I was once in a room that had a communication by a spout with 
a room below. A slip of paper was sent up through this spout, and 
a small but heavy packet was sent down by the same channel. An 
election was " on " that day ! In short, he got into Parliament 
cheaply who paid for his seat less than ^6,000. 

It is hardly requisite to say that this was not the only electoral 
evil. County elections continued for a fortnight,* during which 
every public-house was, night and day, a scene of shocking debauch- 
ery. Not only drunkenness, but brutality and wickedness of all 
kinds, swayed the mob on either side, and to call out the military at 

* The election for Westminster in 1784 lasted forty days. It was during this 
contest that the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire, the lovely champion of Charles 
Fox, bought a blacksmith's vote for a kiss. 



CRUELTY TO ANIMALS. 15 

an election was a common occurrence, although it was against the 
law for a soldier to be seen in uniform while an election was in 
progress. 

Afterward came the consequences, the settlements between land- 
lords and tenants forming a prominent part of the " bill of costs." * 

Many of the best men in Parliament, among others Canning and 
Peel, not only maintained, but received as sacred truths, theories 
concerning the British Constitution that if propounded now would 
be met with absolute derision. " From the day the Bill [the Catho- 
lic Relief Bill] passes, the sun of Great Britain will set" — I heard 
these words as Lord Eldon uttered them from his place in the House 
of Lords, and saw the venerable man shed tears as he spoke them. 
He believed his language was a prophecy, and wept as he foreboded 
the fatal doom of his country and all the glorious institutions so 
many great and good men had striven to establish. 

Sixty years ago no Jew could sit in Parliament ; no Dissenter 
could there represent a constituency ; no Roman Catholic could take 
his seat, though the voters who would have sent him to the House 
outnumbered the adverse Protestant minority twenty to one. Catho- 
lic Emancipation and the Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts 
opened the doors of the House of Commons to Catholics and Dis- 
senters ; and the same liberal and tolerant legislation has since been 
extended to Jews.f 

Cruelty to Animals. — Although the right of dealing wholesale 
in human flesh had, very early in the century, been reluctantly and 
not without a fierce struggle abandoned, the right of cruelty to all 
the lower animals of creation was sacred ; and bull-baiting, dog- 
fighting, and cock-fighting, although beginning to be unsavory, were 
not illegal, while a prize-fight, of man with man, for money stakes, 
was an institution so essential to liberty that he who counseled its 
suppression would have been more unpopular than he who proposed 
abolition of trial by jury. So far from pugilism being considered a 
bar to honors, one prize-fighter, John Gully, who had won his laurels 
in the Ring, and had amassed money, became Member of Parliament 
for the borough of Pontefract, in two successive Parliaments. In 
those days Parliament did not adjourn, as they do now, over the 
Derby Day ; but they did adjourn — or made no House — that the 

* Innumerable promises of places under Government, ranging from that of an 
excise-officer up to a Secretary of State, which promises were always among the 
coin tendered by a candidate on the right side, that had to be redeemed or evaded. 

f "One member of Parliament urged that to give the Jews a resting-place in 
England would invalidate prophecy and destroy one of the principal reasons for 
believing in the Christian, religion. . . . The Mayor and Corporation of London 
petitioned against the Bill. The clergy all over England denounced it. The Bish- 
ops who had voted for the Bill were insulted in the streets." — Lecky. 



1 6 PRIZE-FIGHTS. 

" Champion of England " might be fittingly received at a public en- 
tertainment. 

Prize-Fights. — There may not be many of my readers who have 
witnessed a Prize-Fight at Moulsey Hurst. I can carry them back 
to the time when that degrading and brutal " sport " was an honored 
institution of our country — an institution upheld far into the present 
century and supported even by Royalty. In those days large sums 
were paid for selected places to view a fight. The Ring had its sup- 
porters in thieves and demi-reps, the roads were infested with noto- 
rious robbers, the police were utterly powerless, and all the actors in 
such infernal scenes felt secure in the impunity they derived from 
the knowledge that an appreciative public was about to enjoy a 
" treat." It was not once a year, but a hundred times within the 
twelve months, that such ' treats " were provided. My duties com- 
pelled me to attend such more than once, and at this moment I can 
not recall without a shudder the revolting spectacles I witnessed — 
two combatants, with bruised and battered heads, each seated on 
the knee of his " bottle-holder " sipping spirits, breathing for a few 
seconds until at the umpire's call of " Time " each again rose to 
" maul " the other. Often one of the two was either taken up dead or 
died as a consequence of the "bruising." A fight sometimes occu- 
pied two hours ; generally one hour ; and usually consisted of be- 
tween forty and sixty " rounds." " A first-rate treat may be expect- 
ed " was a stereotyped sentence of the prize-fighters' journals. 

Sometimes, at the meeting " to settle," neither was able to put in 
an appearance. Generally, however, the men were " made-up " for 
the occasion ; and I well remember seeing a wretched fellow, with a 
bandaged jaw and several plaster patches, receiving the congratula- 
tions of his backers in the presence of his wife and half a dozen chil- 
dren. It was at the public-house of the famous Tom Cribb,* in King 
Street, St. James's ; the Cribb who is lauded in much evil literature 
of the period, and with whom the Prince Regent (who is said to have 
driven another famous bruiser, Tom Spring, through the streets of 
London) frequently shook hands. 

The "heroes of the prize-ring" were by no means Bayards. 
" Cross-fights " were very common incidents — that is to say, fights 
where the best man consented, " for a consideration," to be beaten, 
while those who gave odds against him were sure to be great gainers 
by the event. There are long lists of the after-consequences of a 
fight, and there are records of several resulting in trials for murder, 
but never did sentence and execution follow. Judges seldom in- 



* George IV, when Prince of Wales, was a liberal patron of the prize-ring ; so 
was the Duke of York. They were often present to pet and encourage the heroes 
of such interesting occasions. Lord Byron was proud of his personal intimacy 
with the prize-fighter, "Gentleman Jackson." 



PRIZE-FIGHTS. l y 

sisted on verdicts, and juries were sure to acquit, or at the worst to 
say, " Guilty of manslaughter in self-defense." Parliament was not 
altogether an indifferent looker-on ; and although Gully, a prize- 
fighter, as I have stated, sat as M. P. for Pontefract for some years, 
many wise and merciful members raised their voices against the 
scandalous and degrading practice, and cried it down. Among them 
was O'Connell, who from his place in the House characterized these 
disgusting exhibitions as " cowardly, savage, and fraudulent — sources 
of monstrous evil " ; and proclaimed amid cheers that " all connivers, 
aiders, and abettors, and witnesses of fatal prize-fights were guilty of 
murder." 

I remember asking Tom Cribb (so long the " Champion of Eng- 
land ") to let me feel his right arm : it was like a wedge of iron, 
a dense mass of muscle ; it might have given, and often did, a blow 
as effectual as that of a sledge-hammer. Shortly before his death 
Cribb weighed twenty stone. Of course a thick skull was the most 
promising requirement next to a strong arm. The skull of a noted 
prize-fighter in Surgeons' Hall weighs just double that of any other 
skull in the multifarious collection. Tom Moore wrote of Cribb : 

" He had found (such his humor for fighting and eating) 
His foe, like his beefsteak, the better for beating." 

But the magistrates generally were worse than supine ; Govern- 
ment was more than indifferent ; the Home Secretary seldom saw it 
his duty to interfere ; juries were slow to convict ; * and a prize- 
fight was indeed looked upon as a public holiday or country out- 
ing." The practice of this "noble art of self-defense," as it was 
grandly called, was vaunted as a mode of keeping up the manly 
English courage that had won the battles of the country from Crecy 
to Waterloo ; a nursery for the heroes who (like Shaw, the life-guards- 
man who had been a prize-fighter) could and would slay each half a 
dozen before they were themselves. 

The profession was looked upon as a glory and a distinction, in- 
stead of what it truly was, a degradation and a shame. The belt of 
the " Champion of England " was a badge that gave loftier eminence 
to its wearer than the Garter, and people accepted as an honor the 
hand-shake of a ruffian who had degraded humanity. And all this 
created by a foul and pestilent delusion that the brave and manly 
character of Englishmen was sustained and augmented by a system 
that lowered it below the condition of the most ferocious beasts ! 



* In July, 1830, Symon Byrne was tried at Buckingham for killing Sandy 
M'Kay in a prize-fight. The case was as clear as the sun at noonday. Neverthe- 
less the jury returned a verdict of Not Guilty. M'Kay had received many heavy 
blows about the right temple, and his face was so frightfully cut and disfigured that 
the features were lost in a confused mass of gore and bruises. He was bled in the. 
Ring, but was totally insensible. 
2 



! 8 PRIZE-FIGHTS. 

On one occasion within my remembrance the victor was borne 
from the field of his glory, in a coach-and-four, covered with laurels. 
The excitement of the annual University boat-race conveys but a 
faint idea of what were then the attractions of a prize-fight. Crowded 
steamboats, heavily laden coaches, private conveyances by thou- 
sands, conveyed tens of thousands to " the mill," and the public- 
houses kept by notorious " professors " were thronged, day by day, 
prior to a fight coming off. Every change in the betting was chroni- 
cled with more accuracy than similar fluctuations at Epsom or As- 
cot ; weekly statements of progress in training were duly reported ; 
and thus a shameful publicity was given to every movement that 
bore upon the anticipated " treat." * 

It is stated upon safe authority that on one occasion 80,000 peo- 
ple had assembled to witness a prize-fight. 

It may be true that the annual saturnalia at Epsom and Don- 
caster are not far-off cousins to those of Moulsey and Erith ; but a 
time may come when the records of the " Derby " will be read with 
almost as much loathing and wonderment as are those of the human 
beasts either participators in, or encouragers of, prize-fights ; when 
the House of Commons will revert with shame to its annual motion 
to adjourn over "the day" ; and the pretense that they improve the 
breed of horses be as thoroughly ignored as is now the opinion that 
the scenes I have described kept up the manly character of Christian 
men in England. 

Let me picture " a glorious gathering " of which I formed a very 
insignificant unit. I was a reporter, and my duty was to look on and 
describe. I forget the precise occasion, but the scene is as clearly 
before me as if it occurred yesterday. A huge, powerful, hideous- 
looking negro, named Molyneux (the name was as famous then, and 
as much in public mouths, as that of the Duke of Wellington), had 
won one of his victories ; subsequently, he was " smashed " by Tom 

* The " language of the Ring" had its peculiarities, and the sporting reporters 
invented modes of expression that were eminently in keeping with the demoralizing 
and depraving exhibitions they described. I quote a few illustrative passages from 
newspaper reports of the period : 

" A nasty crack on the left jaw rattled the Crispin's ivories and knocked his head 
on one side with a chop heard all over the Ring." "A shower of blows on his 
already damaged nob." " The severity of his fibbing being something like the kick 
of a horse." " A crashing blow inside the left ear floored the man as cleanly as 
many a time he had floored one of his own bullocks." " His brain seemed addled 
by the incessant hammering of Barlee's mawleys upon his sconce." " The blood 
gushed from his nose, mouth, and ears." " His legs tottered under his bulky car- 
cass ; scarcely able to lift his arms, and nearly blind, he seemed groping to find 
where his opponent was." " His mouth was horribly cut, his whole face was a mass 
of contusions, and he was all but blind ; he was covered with his own blood. Hu- 
man nature could sustain no more ; he was borne from the Ring, insensible to 
everything around him," etc. 



DOG-FIGHTS. ! 9 

Cribb, but at that time he bore such blushing honors as his black 
face could express, and was, if not the glass of fashion, certainly the 
observed of all observers. 

The occasion was a banquet of congratulation to the "hero." 
A nobleman was in the chair, above the salt were many men of high 
social rank, on the higher seats mingled aiders, patrons, and sym- 
pathizers, including, of course, all the professors of " the noble sci- 
ence." On the left of the chairman was the Champion of England, 
on his right was the hero of the day. After the customary toasts 
came the toast of the evening — " the victor Molyneux." Up rose the 
ruffian, one arm in a sling, the other grasping a brimming bumper. 
When the chorus of cheers, repeated again and again (for there were 
present not a few whose pockets had been lined by his prowess), had 
died into silence, he delivered his speech of acknowledgment and 
thanks — as well as he could, that is to say : for his broken jaw was 
covered by a silk handkerchief, large strips of diachylon-plaster kept 
up his lower lip ; in fact, his head was a mass of cuts and bruises, 
and no doubt it was the same with his body. It would be a libel on 
the brutes of creation to compare them with this hideous sample of 
humanity. Yet Pericles never walked the streets of Athens followed 
by a greater crowd of admirers. The banquet in his honor was but 
one of many ovations offered to this huge mass of muscle, whose only 
merit was that he could take any amount of " walloping " with ap- 
parently as much indifference as if the blows were delivered upon a 
mass of actual stone. 

I walked over Moulsey Hurst* very lately, and recalled the 
fights that made it famous fifty years ago. The glory had departed, 
only a faint memory of it remains, and probably out of some thou- 
sands present, there was not one who remembered the Hurst in its 
palmy days. It was the day of the Hampton Races, and the mob 
was as low and ruffianly as that which glorified the field half a cent- 
ury ago. There was nothing to remind one of the old shows except 
the gingerbread-stalls. I bought some cakes to distribute among the 
groups of children who surely had no business there. I happened 
to remark that they reminded me of another institution of the past 
— Bartholomew Fair. I was overheard by an aged man, who put in 
a word of lamentation over the decadence of such gatherings — his 
" Ah ! ah ! " was true pathos. 

Few who have had the " luck " to see, will have forgotten the sys- 
tematically arranged prize Dog-Fights of those days. They were 
fights between trained bull-dogs, truly British, who loved fighting 

* Moulsey Hurst is in Surrey, bordering the Thames ; in case of interference to 
prevent a fight, it was easy to cross the river, and continue the affair in Middlesex, 
on the other side, where Surrey magistrates had no jurisdiction, 



20 DRACONIC STATUTES. 

better than their food, and were incited ferociously to worry each 
other. The revolting exhibitions were publicly advertised and largely 
patronized by the nobility and gentry of these realms. Enormous 
sums were paid for well-known victors, and bets from shillings up 
to thousands of pounds were freely staked upon the issue of an 
encounter. Bull-baiting was a popular amusement of somewhat ear- 
lier date, but cock-fighting was then in the zenith of its renown. Has 
any collector of curiosities, I wonder, preserved a pair of the steel 
spurs with which one bird had stricken out the eyes of another, and 
crowed victory over a slain enemy before he was himself killed, but 
not before he had gained large sums for his backers ? 

Bad as was the practice of cock-fighting, nourishing, as it did, all 
odious sentiments and cruel propensities, it was not so bad as the 
custom, vigorous in 1882, of prize Pigeon-shooting, which degrades 
and disgraces humanity. The instinct of chanticleer led him to 
slaughter his foe ; but what can we say of gentlemen, who, with their 
ladies, take delight in breaking the legs and wings and wounding to 
death birds the gentlest and most loving of their kind — and who 
take pride in the announcement that out of thirty shots twenty-nine 
were fatal ? The lessons taught, especially to the young, at Hurling- 
ham are at least as pregnant with evil as those that gave us warnings 
by the doings of cock-fighters in the Potteries, and the human brutes 
of prize-fighters at Erith and Moulsey Hurst. I once saw a bird 
that had been picked up outside bounds at one of these matches 
near aristocratic Kensington ; its wing was riddled with shot and its 
leg broken, so was its bill. There was a terrible indictment pre- 
sented in its condition against the gratuitous murderer, who was no 
doubt receiving at that moment the congratulations of his friends, 
and the grateful acknowledgments of those who had won money by 
his skill in butchering ! Mine was not the hand that put it out of its 
misery, but I saw it done. A mute appeal of suffering in its glazed 
eyes was a prayer for release, and I thought — Could any member of 
that club of gentlemen — in the presence of well-born and well-bred 
ladies sitting around the arena — see these little, gentle, loving birds 
in agony, would it be possible for him to fire another shot to bring 
down such innocent quarry ? 

Draconic Statutes. — In nothing has the change been more 
marked than in our criminal laws. Passing the Old Bailey in 1816, 
I remember seeing six men and one woman pendent from a high 
gallows outside Newgate. Neither the execution of so many un- 
happy wretches, nor the putting them to a public death, is now pos- 
sible.* Up to 1824, ''there were two hundred and twenty-three of- 

* Mary Jones was convicted of having stolen a piece of cotton cloth, value eight 
shillings, from a shop-door in Ludgate Hill in 1818. The poor creature's case ap- 



THE PILLORY. 21 

fenses which were made capital by the laws of England, and out of 
that doleful number of Draconic statutes no fewer than one hundred 
and eighty-seven had been passed since the accession of Charles II. 
In the seven years from 1819 to 1825 there were five hundred and 
seventy-nine executions, and, of the wretched criminals hanged, less 
than one fifth were murderers, the remainder being strangled for 
such crimes as burglary, cattle-stealing, arson, forgery, uttering false 
notes, horse-stealing, robbery, sacrilege, and sheep-stealing." * 

How often has my heart bled when reporting trials and sentences 
at the Old Bailey, ending in the three fearful words, " Left for 
death " ! There are some who can recall, as I can, the pun on the 
name of the Newgate chaplain, the Rev. Mr. Cotton, so often the 
associate of " Mr." Ketch — a dismal joke of the period — the victim 
dying with " a bit of cotton in his ear" 

The Pillory. — Many curious modes of punishment, happily ob- 
solete, I have seen, at one time or other, inflicted upon unfortunate 
men who were offenders against law. I have seen men in the pil- 
lory, men flogged at the cart's tail, men in the stocks often, but that 
was scarcely counted as anything of an infliction. The Pillory is 
one of the oldest of our engines of punishment, and has been in use 
in England certainly from Saxon days. Its shape varied consider- 
ably, but its general form was that of the stocks, only instead of 
being for the legs it was for the neck and wrists, and was generally 
elevated, sometimes indeed turning round on a pivot. The culprit 
— his head, or rather neck, being fastened in the central aperture, 
and his wrists clasped in the smaller holes, one on each side — was 
compelled to stand an hour or more on market-day generally, for 
three consecutive weeks, to receive the gibes, jeers, and missiles of 
the rabble : often leaving it maimed for life. (I quote from the 

peared to have excited great commiseration at the time among the population gen- 
erally, and among them many members of the peerage. 

Mary Jones was a native of Cornwall. Her husband, then an artisan, had for- 
merly been a sailor, and, as the Government was sorely in want of seamen at the 
time, he was pressed and sent to sea. His wife, a woman of unblemished charac- 
ter, made, with an infant at the breast, the journey on foot to London to find her 
husband, and if not successful, a relative whom she thought would give her shelter. 
She was disappointed in both cases, and, after wandering about the streets for some 
days in a starving condition, she, driven to desperation, purloined from a shop the 
piece of cloth. The cry was raised, and the master of the shop ran out of his 
house in pursuit of the thief, who, it appeared, had repented of her crime, and was 
returning to the shop with the cloth in her hand. At her trial she was found 
guilty, but the jury strongly recommended her to mercy on account of her previous 
good character. All, however, was of no avail. The judge, one of the good old 
British school, would not indorse the recommendation of the jury. The majesty 
of the law had to be avenged. The woman was hung at Tyburn, her infant being 
taken from her breast at the foot of the gallows. 

* I quote this from the Daily Telegraph, August, 1882, and rely on its accuracy, 
although, even to me, it seems incredible. 



22 THE STOCKS. 

statement of my friend Llewellyn Jewitt.) " It was a punishment 
inflicted alike on men and women, and one which was indeed dread- 
ful to undergo. The dishonest baker and the cheating alewife, the 
seller of putrid flesh and the night brawler, the forger of letters and 
the courtesan, alike, in the early days of its institution, felt its sad 
effects, and it became at once — 

" ' The terror of the cheat and quean, 
Whose heads it often held, I ween.' 

And in later days free-speaking men, free-thinking politicians, free- 
writing authors, and free-acting publishers, were doomed to bear its 
infliction, and in many cases found it but the stepping-stone from, 
perhaps, obscurity to heroism, being looked upon as saints and mar- 
tyrs who had passed through a fiery ordeal and had come out puri- 
fied. To some poor starving authors and obscure publishers the 
pillory became a real blessing, They were condemned to it poor 
and unknown ; they stood in it an hour or more, and then stepped 
out of it national martyrs whom many delighted to succor and honor. 
But not so with others. Some sensitive minds died through very 
shame and mortification, others died through ill-usage, and thus the 
pillory had its victims as well as the gallows." Its use except as a 
punishment for perjury was forbidden in 1815, and it was finally 
abolished altogether in 1837. In 181 2, Eaton, the aged publisher of 
Tom Paine's "Age of Reason," stood in the pillory and was lustily 
cheered ; the last who suffered its infliction at the Old Bailey being 
Peter James Bossy, who had committed perjury, in 1832.* 

The Stocks are equally old as an engine of punishment, and 
were until of late years in universal use. There could scarcely be 
found a village in England in which one of these instruments of pa- 
rochial terror was not to be seen on the village green, against its 
churchyard wall, adjoining its cross, or in some other public situa- 
tion ; and there was scarcely a corporate or market town, or even 
city, which did not keep them in proper repair in some well-fre- 
quented spot, for the correction of delinquents and the maintenance 
of public order. The stocks, although always having precisely the 
same principle of construction, varied in form. Sometimes they 
were formed by two upright posts, a few feet apart, with a running 
slot up each. Two transverse beams, the lower one fixed and the 
upper moving up and down in the slots, had each semicircular holes 
cut, the one in the upper, the other in its lower edge, so that when 

* In 1 8 10, "at the bottom of Norris Street, Haymarket, six persons were placed 
in the pillory on one and the same day. They were brought from Newgate to the 
Haymarket in an open cart, and pelted all the way ; and as soon as a convenient 
ring could be formed by the constables a number of women, provided with baskets 
full of offensive projectiles, were admitted into the charmed circle and mauled the 
offenders at their leisure." 



FLOGGING AT THE CART'S TAIL. 23 

placed together they would firmly inclose the legs of the culprit. 
The upper beam being raised, the victim was compelled to place one 
leg in each of the semicircular openings in the top of the lower beam ; 
the upper beam was then let down and fastened, and thus the legs 
were firmly " put in Chancery," the poor wretch being seated on the 
ground or on a bench, and unable to change his (or her) position. 
One, two, or more hours was the time the prisoner was kept " in du- 
rance vile," and during that time he was not only the laughing- 
stock " of the populace, but had to endure, without ability to resent, 
all the indignities that were thrust upon him.* 

The " Brank," or " Scold's Bridle," had gone out of use before 
my time, but the curious may still see one in the church at Walton- 
on-Thames, and others in some museums and private collections. 
The brank was literally a gag fixed in a framework, and not intended 
to close the mouth, but to prevent the "tongue wagging." Most cor- 
porations in former days had one of these instruments of punish- 
ment, and, judging from the number of entries in records, it was 
frequently put to use as well as the ducking-stool, the stocks, and 
the whipping-post, f 

Let my readers fancy, if they can, a man " presenting " his wife to 
the mayor as a "scold" or as a "gossip" or "brawler," and claiming 
that punishment should be administered to her ! What would they 
think if they saw the poor woman " bridled," the knife-point thrust 
into her mouth, the iron hoop locked tight round her jaws, the cross- 
bands of iron brought over her head and clasped behind, her arms 
pinioned, a ring and chain attached to the brank, and the unfortu- 
nate creature thus led or driven from the market-place through all 
the principal streets of the town for an hour or two, and then brought 
back faint, bleeding, and degraded ? 

Flogging at the Cart's Tail was another cruel mode of 
punishment which I have more than once seen inflicted. A wretched 
man had his hands securely fastened to the end of a cart ; he was 
then flogged all the way from the jail to the end of the town, till his 
back streamed with blood.J 

* I very recently examined one of these machines of punishment in a church- 
yard some three miles from Exeter. 

\ In Cheshire, I learn from The Reliquary, no less than thirteen examples are 
still extant. How many more have been used and lost it is of course impossible to 
conjecture. In Lancashire five or six are still remaining, and in Staffordshire about 
the same number are in existence. 

X Fl°gg m g is undoubtedly one of the oldest of punishments, and its infliction is 
found not unfrequently represented in Saxon and other early illuminated manu- 
scripts. In one of these early drawings a wretched woman, in a state of absolute 
nudity, has one of her feet fastened down to the ground with a ring, her hands 
bornd tightly together behind her back, and is being unmercifully flogged by two 



24 HANGING IN CHAINS. 

When the punishment was inflicted " in a cart," or " at the cart's 
tail," the poor wretch was tied in the first case to a structure of tim- 
ber in the cart, the " executioner " standing by and flogging the bare 
body as the cart was drawn along. In the latter the' culprit was 
stripped, her or his hands tied to the back of the cart, and as the 
vehicle moved along, was compelled to walk with it, the executioner 
walking by the side and laying on unmercifully all the way. The 
common course in country towns was for the victim thus to be 
dragged at the cart's tail from the prison through the principal streets 
round the market-place and back again ; and this was often repeated 
on three consecutive market-days.* 

The Ducking-Stool was another mode of punishment, the use 
of which comes within the time of my personal recollections. It was 
kept in repair and ready for employment in most towns, and in many 
villages. Its construction varied in different localities ; ordinarily, 
however, it was a heavy, cumbersome kind of wooden chair, in which 
the culprit was forced to sit, and to submit to be fastened by pinion- 
ing with bars or cords, or both. Sometimes the chair was attached to 
the end of a beam that would turn round on a pivot, over a pond, or 
river, or even a mill-dam ; at others it was suspended by a chain, so 
that it could be let down or raised at will ; and in others it was 
placed on wheels so as to run down into the water. Whatever was 
the form of the instrument, the punishment was the same — and that 
was forcible immersion. The delinquent, being firmly fixed in the 
chair, was ducked over head and heels in the water three or four 
times, and was often brought out nearly — sometimes literally — dead. 

Hanging in Chains. — To see the decaying body of a man 
' hanging in chains " was by no means a rare sight in those days. 
For certain crimes malefactors were, after execution, " gibbeted," 

men, who are standing one on each side of her, with enormous rods. Public whip- 
ping of women for vagrancy and petty offenses continued in vogue until 1820, 
when it was abolished under what is generally known as General Thornton's Act. 
Almost every town, indeed almost every village, had formerly its " whipping-post," 
which was often attached to, or formed part of, the structure of the pillory or 
stocks. 

A memorable story is told of Lord Norbury. He had a sort of stutter, and on 
one occasion he jerked out, " The sentence of the Court upon you is that you be 
flogged from the county jail to the end of the town ! — " "Thank ye, my lord," 
said the culprit ; "you've done your worst." — "and back again!" completed the 
judge. 

* The usual fee paid a man for whipping varied from fourpence up to a shilling 
or two ; and entries such as " Paid for whipping Ann Swift, \d." or " Paid toward 
the whipping of the cut-purse woman, 6d.," often occur in corporation records, and 
the sentence was usually in this kind of form — " Mariam Kirk, uxor Thome Kirk, 
sentenced to be whipt with her body bare to ye waste, eyther in a cart or tyed be- 
hind one, from ye Borough gaole round ye market-place and down ye Rotten Row 
back to ye gaole, on Friday next between ye hours of twelve and one in ye day." 



SALES OF WIVES. 2 $ 

that is, hung in chains near the spot where the murder had been com- 
mitted, and left there to rot away till at length the bleached bones fell 
asunder. Hanging in chains was employed as a supposed preventive 
of crime and a warning to evil-doers. It was abolished in 1834. I 
have seen and " smelt " such offenders very often. 

"Body-Snatching." — It is not so long ago that the business of 
a " resurrectionist " was a profitable calling, but it was put a stop to 
after the wholesale murders by Burke and Hare in 1830. The prac- 
tice of procuring bodies for surgeons was a regular trade, the newly 
buried bodies in country churchyards being constantly exhumed by 
" resurrection men " and sold to doctors. In Ireland, where it was 
regarded with peculiar horror and detestation, to steal a body from 
a graveyard was a feat of which young medical students were proud. 
It implied daring, and inferred peril. I remember a case (indeed, I 
was one of the party) where a stolen corpse was traced to the house 
of an eminent anatomical professor. A crowd soon gathered, and 
the " thieves " narrowly escaped with their lives. If any one of them 
had been found — as the body was — he would certainly have lost his 
life. Many are the tales recounted of "body-snatching." To so 
great a state of terror had the people at one time been driven that, 
whenever a corpse was buried, the friends watched in the church or 
churchyard nightly, with lights, to preserve the grave from being 
opened and desecrated ; fights over dead bodies between the " snatch- 
ers " and the relations or friends of the deceased have often occurred. 

Sales of Wives. — People have heard of selling and buying a 
wife at Smithfield, but few have witnessed the shameful occurrence. 
I have seen it, and can picture the scene, which is strongly impressed 
on my memory. It occurred outside an old public-house at White- 
chapel, and was conducted with all befitting ceremony. A respect- 
ably dressed woman, aged about thirty, was seated close to the door ; 
immediately behind her was the landlord, who acted as the auc- 
tioneer ; not far off was her husband, a wretched-looking fellow, 
whom any woman, however low her grade, would be glad to be rid 
of. He was a burly rascal, and contrasted unfavorably with a com- 
paratively young man, who, it was understood, would be the highest 
bidder. There was, however, no other bidding than his, and the 
publican did metaphorically what her husband had no doubt done 
often — knocked her down, at the unprecedented figure of half a crown 
and a pot of porter ! I saw the newly united pair walk off, the man 
with an air of bravado, and the woman with a sniff in the air, as she 
rose from the still-sitting group, each of whom had in his hand a 
pewter can, from which, no doubt, he drank the health of the bride 
and bridegroom. The ex-husband did not do so ; he looked glum ; 
his neighbors manifested neither sympathy nor approval. He was, 
I suppose, always a blackguard, and certainly so just then. He 



26 DUELING. 

gained nothing by the bargain beyond the half-crown and the pot of 
porter ; the sale released him from no responsibility either to the 
parish or the law, but the transaction freed his successor from dan- 
ger of an action for crim. con. : that was all his gain beyond the lady. 
Such transfers of conjugal rights were frequent fifty years ago. 

Cross-Road Burials. — Fifty years ago, the bodies of suicides 
were subjected to shocking indignities. They were, by law, ordered 
to be buried at midnight at cross-roads, and a hedge-stake driven 
through the body. No religious rites were permitted ; a hole was 
dug where two roads crossed each other, often in a lonely, solitary 
spot, and at midnight, with or without torches, lanterns, or candles, 
the body was placed, usually coffinless, in the hole, a stake driven 
right through the chest or bowels into the ground beneath, and the 
grave filled in. In 1823 the practice was, by Act of Parliament, 
abolished, and it was enacted that the bodies of suicides might in 
future be buried in any ordinary churchyard between the hours of 
nine and twelve at night, without any religious ceremony, the inter- 
ment to be private, and to take place within twenty-four hours from 
the finding of the inquisition by the coroner. I was once present at 
the repulsive midnight ceremony. The "crowner's quest" had pro- 
nounced the wretched creature guilty of felo-de-se, and he was buried 
by torchlight where four roads met, and a stake was driven through 
his body. It was not until 1882 that this Act was entirely abrogated ; 
its practice had ceased long previously. 

Dueling. — From the subject of suicide to that of murder is 
scarcely such an abrupt transition that I need preface my change of 
theme by an apology. I have but one form of murder in my mind's- 
eye at present — that once-honored institution known as dueling. 
Sixty years ago, while the man who took his own life was pursued 
even with such vengeance as the law could wreak on his cold clay, 
the man who took his fellow-man's, in accordance with the regula- 
tions of the unwritten laws of honor, would in all probability be left 
by the laws of the realm to walk abroad as free as if he had not on 
his brow the brand of Cain. 

I was present at a duel once — a fatal duel — that was fought near 
Rosscarberry, in the County of Cork. Two first cousins had quar- 
reled over something, the merest trifle, and a meeting was the result. 
A few minutes before they fired I heard one of the principals say to 
his second, " I declare I have not even anger against my cousin." 
He had merely said what he thought, that the other principal had 
behaved like a goose, adding, " I know I am less than a goose for 
going out with him." The first shot laid him on the sward, mor- 
tally wounded. At this long distance of time, I can see the gradual 
film, the glazed look of death, come over his eyes, and hear the sob 
with which he yielded up a life full of hope and promise. A fine 



DUELING. 2 j 

young fellow lay dead, while there was in dispute the barest point of 
honor that a judicious arbiter might have settled in half a minute by 
half a dozen words ! I did not on that mournful day see the body 
conveyed to the house the dead man had left, but I passed there 
subsequently, and could well imagine the intense agony of a house- 
hold where he was deeply and fondly loved. 

It was, as any one familiar with the social history of that time is 
well aware, in Ireland, and among Irishmen, that the practice of 
dueling chiefly flourished. 

A mile or so out of Castlebar I stood in a field where it was 
stated to me that sixty fatal duels had taken place, the last being 
that of an uncle who had shot his nephew — or a nephew who had 
shot his uncle. 

At one time a club existed in Galway to which no person was 
admitted who had not shot his man. At Castlebar I was shown a 
pistol marked with seven notches — each notch indicated that it had 
sent a bullet into an adversary. I once conversed with a gentleman 
who had acted as second in twenty duels, two only of which, how- 
ever, were fatal. In that neighborhood I stood on a filled-up saw- 
pit into which two gentlemen had been put to fight a duel, each 
armed with a brace of pistols and a small-sword. Both were taken 
out for dead, yet both recovered — one, Dick Martin, to become fa- 
mous as " Humanity Martin " ; the other, George Robert Fitzgerald, 
" Fighting Fitzgerald," to be hanged at Castlebar for murder. The 
Lord Chancellor of Ireland, Clare, fought the Master of the Rolls, 
Curran. Judge Egan fought another Master of the Rolls, Barrett. 
The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Corry, fought Henry Grattan, 
who was a Privy Councilor. A baron of the Exchequer fought his 
brother-in-law and two others. Chief-Justice Lord Norbury fought 
" Fighting Fitzgerald " and two others. These are not the only 
judges who fought duels. Sir Jonah Barrington states that during 
his " grand climacteric," two hundred and twenty-seven memorable 
and official duels had been fought. Indeed, he is justified in stating 
that until he had fought a duel no young gentleman's education was 
considered complete. He writes of one man who had fought sixteen 
duels. 

In the army it was almost a necessity that every officer, when he 
joined, should be called upon to fight a duel. My father (who, by- 
the-by, was never wounded but once, and that was in a duel) told 
me this story : A fine young fellow at the mess-table had been sub- 
jected by the captain who presided to a series of insulting sneers. 
At last he was asked, " Mr. So-and-so, what is your father ? " " My 
father ? " was the answer, after a little hesitation — " my father is a 
farmer, sir." " Pity he did not make a farmer of you," said the ques- 
tioner, with a manner as insulting as the words. The young man put 
up with this affront, and there went round a murmur that hinted at 
Coventry as his speedy destination. After a while he addressed the 



28 DUELING. 

captain : " You asked me just now, sir, concerning my father ; may 
I ask what your father is?" "My father is a gentleman, sir." 
" Pity he didn't make a gentleman of you," said the youth ; and, 
rising from table, he left the room to call out the captain, whom he 
shot. 

Of course a duel generally followed an election, or rather occurred 
while it was pending ; and sometimes an unpopular candidate was 
thus deprived of his life and chance together. I have an anecdote 
of Dick Martin, of Galway, who, being in conversation with the 
Prince Regent, was addressed by the Prince with " So you are going 
to have a contested election in your county ? " " Yes, your Royal 
Highness, as usual." "And who will win ? " " The survivor, please 
your Royal Highness," Martin answered with Hibernian coolness.* 

But Irish statesmen and judges, though the most frequent, were 
by no means the only resorters to the arbitrament of the pistol. 
Fox, Sheridan, Canning, Castlereagh, all these great men in their 
time exchanged shots with an opponent. As late as 1829 took place 
the duel between the Earl of Winchelsea and the Duke of Welling- 
ton on Wimbledon Common, when shots were exchanged, happily 
without result. 

Among the many good deeds of the Prince Consort must be 
reckoned that which mainly contributed to give its death-blow to the 
practice of dueling. 

In 1843 the last duel of any consequence was fought in England : 
Lieutenant Munro killed his brother-in-law, Colonel Fawcett. I 
copy the following from Sir Theodore Martin's Life of the Good 
Prince : 

" The survivor, it was known, had endured intolerable provocation. He 
had gone out most reluctantly, and only because not to have done so must, 
according to the then prevailing code, have fatally compromised his honor. 
As it was, he who had been the party really aggrieved was branded as a felon, 
and his career as an officer was ruined by the unhappy issue of an encounter 
which every officer in the service would, in the same circumstances, have felt 
he could not avoid. Similar disasters had excited comparatively little notice, 
but here the intimate relations of the parties made the issue appear so much 
more shocking, that people felt the time was come to decide whether a sys- 
tem should continue by which a man, having first been insulted, must also 
expose himself to be shot or be branded — in one event as a coward, or in 
another as a criminal." 

The Prince " therefore suggested the establishment of courts of 
honor, bound to secrecy, to whose arbitrament officers should submit 
their differences." But the idea was abandoned, and "it was re- 
solved to effect the desired reform by an amendment of the Articles 

* The father of Toler, Lord Norbury, on his death-bed and almost with dying 
lips, took a pair of pistols from under his pillow, and murmured, as he presented 
them to his son — " Now, Jack, be always ready to keep up the credit of the family 
and the honor of an Irish gentleman." 



IMPRISONMENT FOR DEBT. 



2 9 



of War. In pursuance of this decision Amended Articles were is- 
sued in April, 1844, which declared 'it to be suitable to the charac- 
ter of honorable men to apologize and offer redress for wrong or in- 
sult committed, and equally so for the party aggrieved to accept 
frankly and cordially explanation and apologies for the same.' " 

" The Prince had the satisfaction of seeing that he had not taken 
up the question in vain, for a death-blow was dealt by this declara- 
tion to so-called affairs of honor. Dueling was so discredited that 
it became from that time practically impossible." 

Imprisonment for Debt. — I recall to memory the days when 
debtors were imprisoned for debts that (before " costs " were added 
to them) were, originally, often under a pound ; imprisoned where 
there could be no labor either for self or creditors, and where the 
incarcerated body contained a dilapidated and utterly hopeless mind. 
I must occupy some space with this subject, although it is not so 
very long ago that the decadence of the Fleet and the King's Bench 
Prisons took place, and that their power for increasing the spread of 
misery and ruin became a thing of the past.* 

Many times have I passed through the street of palace ware- 
houses (Farringdon Street) on which a dead wall of the Fleet 
abutted. In a neighboring street the marvelous boy Chatterton 
" perished in his pride," and those who, nearly a century afterward, 
erected a monument to his memory in Bristol could not find the 
grave of the poor suicide in St. Andrew's graveyard. Close at hand, 
near the Fleet Prison, were once to be found those taverns, the scenes 
of the notorious Fleet marriages, in which debauched clergymen 
joined spendthrifts and demi-reps in the bonds of holy matrimony. 
But these do not belong to my Recollections : imprisonment for debt 
does ; and in order to do the wretched theme justice, I must needs 
devote to it some space. 

In the dead wall of the Fleet there was a small iron-grated win- 
dow, at which a man was seated from daybreak to midnight. He 
had been selected for the duty, probably because, having a melan- 
choly countenance and a doleful voice, he would be more likely to 
excite pity and obtain aid. Every minute he uttered this prayer — 
like the cry of the cuckoo it never changed : 

" Pity the poor debtors, having no allowance ! " 

* There existed an admirable society for the "discharge and relief of persons 
imprisoned for small debts." Their report in 1834 states that, between the 4th of 
June and the 2d of July of that year, no fewer than ninety-seven debtors, seventy- 
seven of whom had wives and children, were discharged from the pi'isons of Eng- 
land and Wales, the expense of whose liberation, including every charge connected 
with the society, was £211 \%s. %d. ! But there is ample evidence that debts origi- 
nally shillings were augmented to pounds, by costs ; and the one kept the unhappy 
debtor a prisoner at least as effectually as the other. 



30 



THE SPUNGING-HOUSE. 



Some pitying passer-by occasionally dropped into an iron box at 
the window a penny and went his way. I have done so more than 
once, and lingered to hear if there were any acknowledgment or re- 
sponse. There was none — the penny did not go to him. Like a 
sentinel on guard, his only recompense was to be relieved. But it 
augmented the stock of incarcerated wretches within — " poor debtors 
having no allowance." That dismal sentence rings in my ears to- 
day, though uttered sixty years ago. 

The whole history of imprisonment for debt is mournful and de- 
grading. If a man or woman owed even a small sum of money which 
he or she was unable to pay, it was counted a crime that subjected 
the unfortunate debtor to a punishment more severe than that to 
which a sheep-stealer is now liable. 

A tap on the shoulder by a sheriff's officer was followed by an in- 
troduction to that intermediate purgatory, the " spunging - house," 
which, however, the culprit could avoid — as a luxury beyond his 
means — by proceeding directly to Whitecross Street, the King's 
Bench, or some other " home " of incarceration provided by the Leg- 
islature for those who were guilty of the sin of poverty. At the 
" spunging-house " the prisoner was detained (if he so pleased) in the 
hope of settling his affairs. They were filthy houses in the vicinity 
of Temple Bar, where the prisoner had to pay enormously for the ac- 
corded luxuries of food and drink, and especially for solitude. There 
were many such dwellings, the keepers of which made enormous for- 
tunes out of the necessities of debtors — guests afflicted with the sick- 
ness of hope deferred. Ample description of the miseries of these 
dens will be found in some of the novels of sixty years ago, but it 
will require no great stretch of fancy to picture either " the common 
room " or the solitary chamber, enormously paid for, in which the 
unhappy prisoner was located for days, often weeks, and sometimes 
months. 

The keepers were harpies of the worst order ; they drove in car- 
riages and had aristocratic dwellings elsewhere. The sheriff's offi- 
cer's officers did the business and shared the gains. But these dens 
were more endurable than the actual prison to which the debtor who 
could make no arrangement was sooner or later conveyed. It is 
needless to enter into repulsive details ; there are many yet living 
who could give them from mournful experience, but who would 
shrink with grief and disgust from recalling them to memory. Money 
obtained several important immunities : frequently a prisoner was 
able to secure the society of one or more members of his family, he 
could purchase better food, hire a room to himself, receive his friends 
and make merry with them, often to the extent of orgies disgraceful 
even there. 

But in the greater number of cases hope was effectually shut out, 
until the Insolvent Debtors' Act opened the gates and sent the 
debtors into the world again. It frequently happened, however, that 



THE KING'S BENCH PRISON. 3 ! 

a debtor remained for many years imprisoned, preferring misery to 
yielding up the means on which a family depended, the relinquish- 
ment of which would have beggared half a score instead of causing 
the wretchedness of one. The law did not compel him to any other 
course. It is needless to say that the prison was the cause of much 
unquestionable evil, and no possible good. Utter idleness, which 
produced disinclination for work, was the least of those evils : reck- 
less habits were taught and acquired ; and few who had gone into a 
debtors' prison honest and pure, came out untainted by the vicious 
and deleterious influence of the place. 

In 1834 I published in the New Monthly a series of articles en- 
titled " The Debtor's Experience." They were powerfully written, 
full of startling statements and revolting facts that were calculated 
to promote the salutary changes in the law regarding imprisonment 
for debt that soon afterward followed.* 

The picture is horrible in its squalid misery, yet scenes even more 
repulsive might be painted of old days in the Marshalsea and the 
Fleet. 

In 1827 I visited Benjamin Robert Haydon in the King's Bench 
Prison. It was the second time this master-artist had been a pris- 
oner there, yet he was not destitute of friends. Few men, indeed, 
had truer, more sympathizing, or more generous friends than had 
Haydon. Many came promptly to his aid, and at a public meeting 
a considerable sum was raised for his relief, and his incarceration 
was not for long. My visit was in response to his request that I 
would see his sketch for a picture of " The Mock Election " — a pict- 
ure he subsequently finished, and, in 1828, exhibited at the Egyptian 
Hall. I grieved to find that the usual consequences had followed 
his incarceration : he was slatternly in dress, his hair was uncombed, 
his beard unshaven, and he sat, a slipshod figure in a mean room, of 
which the furniture was worth but a few shillings. 

He was, in fact, a living evidence of the mistaken policy of im- 
prisonment for debt, and, while I observed with pain the deteriora- 
tion of soul that had surely dictated the subject of the picture I had 
come to see, I recalled the sonnet addressed to him by the poet 
Wordsworth — 

" High is our calling, friend ! " 

* Here is a passage from one of the papers. It is the writer's description of the 
surroundings of a dying debtor : " Like all apartments in the prison, the room was 
small, about twelve feet square, the walls were green, here and there darkened with 
a spot of damp ; there was no carpet on the floor, and either the fire was extin- 
guished or the embers were the wreck of some former day's warmth. A rushlight, 
wrapped round with paper and stuck in a bottle, threw a faint flicker over the 
chamber. The bed — its curtains had long been pledged for food ; so had the 
sheets ; a torn blanket was its only covering. On a mattress in one corner lay two 
children, the eldest of whom had a baby in her arms. The sick man lay on the 
bed, his weakly wife seated on the floor, watching his heavy breathing." 



32 THE RULES OF THE BENCH. 

It was an unworthy theme for composition, and yet the painter 
thought it " the finest subject for humor and pathos on earth." The 
hero of the picture, if hero he could be called, was a young Irishman 
with whom I had some slight acquaintance, a ne'er-do-well of the 
name of Murphy, in whose haggard features and gaunt, wasted frame 
might be read the sure promise that early dissipation had produced 
premature death. 

The painter thus described what he had seen from his window : 

" Before me were three men marching in solemn procession, the one in 
the center a tall, young, bushy-haired, light-hearted Irishman, with a rusty 
cocked hat under his arm, a bunch of flowers in his bosom, curtain-rings 
round his neck for a gold chain, a mop-stick for a white wand, bows of rib- 
bons on his shoulders, and a great hole in his elbow, of which he seemed per- 
fectly unconscious ; on his right was another person in burlesque solemnity, 
with a sash and real white wand ; two others, fantastically dressed, came im- 
mediately behind, and the whole followed by characters of all descriptions, 
some with flags, some with staffs, and all in perfect merriment and mock 
gravity adapted to some masquerade." 

" Baronets and bankers ; authors and merchants ; painters and poets ; 
dandies of rank in silk and velvet ; dandies of no rank in rags and tatters ; 
idiotism and insanity ; poverty and affliction ; all mingled there in indiscrimi- 
nate merriment, with a spiked wall twenty feet high above their heads ! " 

The painting was purchased by George IV., and is now in the 
Royal collection. Haydon painted a second picture of this un- 
worthy theme, "Chairing the Member." One of the episodes in the 
composition exhibits a mournful family, the father holding in his hand 
a paper — a keynote to many a sad retrospect — thus marked, " Debt 
£26 10s. Costs ^"157 4-f." One of the painter's models had been 
a prisoner for nine years. Haydon, writing from experience, calls 
the prison " a temple of idleness, debauchery, and vice " ; and so it 
surely was ! 

At the time of which I write, and long previous to it, what were 
termed the " Rules of the Bench " gave a privilege to those who had 
influence, and could give security to the marshal, who was the su- 
preme ruler and dictator of the prison. The debtor who had means 
or influence to do this was permitted to lodge outside the walls, in 
any house within a mile of the prison, under contract never to go 
beyond the distance, and to surrender whenever called upon to do 
so. The bond was not strictly enforced, and the prisoner was sel- 
dom tied by it. He received his friends, saw whatever company he 
pleased, and if he made return visits, out of bounds, the marshal was 
not greatly troubled thereby. Absence without leave was not a 
very serious offense. Many imprisoned debtors enjoyed the 1st 
of September in preserves a hundred miles from Melina Place, 
Lambeth ; when wanted, however, of which due notice would be 
given, the recusant was always forthcoming. Theodore Hook told 



CRIMINAL PRISONS. 



33 



me of a friend of his who, while he was imprisoned within the 
rules, made a voyage to India and back, and returned to his place 
of (theoretical) durance before inquiry had made public the fact 
that he was an absentee. One morning he paid a visit to the mar- 
shal. " It is a long time since I have had the pleasure of seeing you, 

Mr. ," said the marshal. " No wonder," was the answer, " I 

have been to India since I saw you last." The custodian of the body 
was startled, no doubt, and explanation followed. Knowing that 
his affairs were so complicated that no one but himself could arrange 
them, he ran the risk of a discovery that would have saddled his se- 
curities with his debts, and came safely back to discharge his liabili- 
ties and bid the astonished marshal good-by. 

Criminal Prisons. — If the condition of prisons for debtors was 
deplorable, those for persons criminally accused were infinitely worse. 
The most shocking and repulsive prisons of the Continent, that 
Howard went to cleanse and open, had their parallels in free, happy, 
and prosperous England. Matters were not so bad as they had been 
at the end of last century, yet it would be hard to conceive, and 
harder still to believe, the horrible state of the buildings, the moral 
and social turpitude of the prisoners and officials, or the unscreened 
profligacy that characterized prisons and prison discipline barely 
sixty years ago. There was commonly a liquor-shop within the walls, 
and such of the incarcerated as had money found it easy to indulge 
in drunkenness or even grosser debauchery. 

Oppression of the poor and robbery of the rich were the vested 
rights of the officials ; for that right they had purchased, and consid- 
ered honestly their own. Many instances are recorded of notorious 
murderers being accommodated with the best rooms, receiving 
friends, getting drunk with them, being, in fact, in the enjoyment of 
all luxuries — except that they were not allowed outside the waiis. 
To keep high revel in Newgate was a privilege purchased and paid 
for ; they were ruffians who bought it, and greater ruffians who sold 
it. The monstrous evil grew less and less as the century advanced, 
but within my own memory the prisons were assuredly nurseries for 
fostering and encouraging crime, and not places where it was to be 
either punished or repressed. Indeed, the greater his guilt the more 
certainly was a criminal elevated by it above his fellows, and stood 
there on his pedestal of crime — an heroic figure to whom the lesser 
villains around paid the tribute of their admiration and applause. 

Yes ; Prisons were nurseries of crime, and the law offered boun- 
ties for its encouragement. What else were the sums paid as money 
to informers, the most loathsome products of our civilization in " the 
good old hanging-days " — the Judases who trafficked in betrayal of 
their fellow-men ? A fearful list would it be, and one terribly to 
our shame as a nation — that of the innocent done to death in the 
3 



34 PRISONS FOR THE INSANE. 

last century, and the early years of this, by seekers after Blood- 
money. 

The country paid, as reward for the conviction of any person 
found guilty of passing forged notes and coining false money, the 
sum of £40. As the common and certain consequence of this mis- 
taken — one is tempted to write infamous — system, simple country 
lads, and innocent and ignorant girls, were decoyed by designing 
wretches into entering shops to seek change for bad notes, or tricked 
into taking part in the operations of coiners. Caught in the act their 
doom was certain, and no less certain were the miscreants who had 
murdered them of receiving the price of their blood. There was no 
session at the Old Bailey fifty or sixty years ago, but at least one of 
these innocent victims underwent the capital sentence of the law ; 
some poor, simple creature who, when he or she had sought to pass 
the forged note or had helped to manufacture the base coin, had not 
the slightest notion that the act was a wrong one, far less that it was 
calculated to put life in peril.* 

" Prisons " for the Insane. — Sixty years ago what hells were 
Asylums for the Insane ! The unhappy patient was loaded with fet- 
ters, confined for weeks together where he could not hear a human 
voice, and left as helpless as a slave beneath the driver's lash, to the 
mercy of keepers — the most brutal of mankind. 

I remember an ingenious recipe prescribed at the Insane Asylum 
of Cork. The patient was made to stand upon a boarding placed 
over a hidden tank, and — the boarding being so contrived as to give 
way suddenly without any warning — the poor wretch was soused in 
the water ; the shock to the system thus produced being believed to 
act as a restorer to reason, and a remover of madness ! In 1820 I 
was intimate with the superintendent of the public insane asylum at 
Cork, and was frequently his visitor — a witness of deeds that often 
made me shudder. Pass through any of the corridors, you were sure 
to hear the moans, sometimes the shrieks, and always the clanking 
chains, of the miserable prisoners, who were kept in darkness and 
solitude as a remedy for their mental affliction, and whose appeals 
for mercy were heard only by the stone walls of a cell ten feet by 
eight. More than half naked, the tenants of these dens had for all 
bed-covering a thin blanket that generally hung in shreds, for furni- 
ture a rickety stool, and as their only utensil a stone jar. Such were 
cells, tenants, and furniture in many other cities than Cork in the 
days of which I write. 

* It was Alderman Sir Matthew Wood, "thrice Lord Mayor of London," who 
put an end to this infamous traffic in human life. The case that secured his 
interference occurred, if I recollect rightly, in 1816, when a trio of villainous 
wretches had entrapped three miserable creatures, who were sentenced to die, and 
would have died, on the gallows, but that the worthy alderman, and good man, was 
Sheriff of London during that year and stepped in to save them. 



SAMARITANS. 35 

A keeper armed with a heavy whip kept order among the miserable 
wretches, who, in general, retained just enough reason to be sensible 
of fear. As to consideration, sympathy, or mercy, they received none. 
Yet, as a rule, there was no deliberate or intentional cruelty. The 
brutal treatment was only part of a system universally believed in, 
practiced not only in public asylums, but in private establishments, 
of which there were many so conducted as to be disgraces to human 
nature in its very worst form. 

Honored be the name of the brother-doctors Conolly, who were 
among the earliest to demonstrate the cruelty and absurdity of such 
brutal and wicked experiments, and the first to suggest that human- 
ity might be permitted to preside over the establishments into which 
were thrust those whom God had afflicted, but to whose charge man 
had to lay no crime. With one of these good brothers I many times 
conversed concerning the now universally adopted plan of seeking 
to soothe by gentleness, in lieu of exasperating by harsh treatment to 
fiercer frenzy, the wounded minds of the insane. Then it seemed 
only a dream of the merciful inventor that the system, however good, 
should in less than a quarter of a century become universal ; that 
the mad should be under the protection of the state ; that to gag, 
or chain, or half drown, a lunatic would be a crime subjecting any 
who committed it to a heavy penalty ; that men and women thus un- 
happily afflicted should have their awful burden lightened by occu- 
pations suited to their capacities ; that entire idleness should no 
longer augment their misery ; that reading and writing should be 
encouraged, and that music and dancing parties should be, as they 
happily are, among the weekly treats in which matrons, keepers, and 
often magistrates may be found taking allotted parts. 

Samaritans. — I remember when the " Strangers' Friend Soci- 
ety," * with its volunteer workers, was almost the sole society that 
did the work of the Good Samaritan ; and the " Bible Society," with 
its then weak offshoots, the only one that taught morality by the 
teaching of God's Word ; while hospitals and dispensaries, few in 
number and inefficient in power, ministered to the corporeal neces- 
sities of the millions who required help. 

How is it now ? At the present time there is not a single ailment 
of body — hardly of mind — for the alleviation or cure of which some 
hospital or institution is not provided. What the rich are doing for 
the poor is a long and glorious record. Indeed, it would fill a score 
of these pages merely to give the names of institutions founded by 
good and wise men and women for the help and comfort of suffering 
brethren and sisters — that minister to the needs of our common hu- 
manity. 

In the leading thoroughfares or wealthy suburbs of most of the 

* This admirable society recently celebrated its ninety-fifth anniversary. 



36 VA UXHALL. 

cities and towns of the Kingdom, and, indeed, even in many villages, 
one meets building after building — infirmaries, hospitals, orphanages, 
homes, asylums for the blind, and a host of other institutions, in- 
scribed on which the words " Supported by Voluntary Contribu- 
tions " show gloriously forth. 

Vauxhall. — In writing of the changes that sixty years have 
brought about, I find myself placed, by the nature of my theme, in 
a position somewhat resembling that of the exhibitor of a series of 
dissolving views, in which a serious subject is suddenly displaced by 
a merry one, or a wintry landscape transforms itself into a pleasant 
picture of summer. Without other apology than this, I conjure up 
a vision of the most noted resort for amusement in London — Vaux- 
hall Gardens — as they have often been seen by me fifty years ago. 

Vauxhall succeeded Ranelagh, but Vauxhall has had no succes- 
sor. Cremorne was but a tawdry imitation ; and whereas one could 
hardly bring against the older gardens any worse charge than frivol- 
ity, Cremorne was strongly and justly denounced as a lure to vice. 

Those who are old enough to have seen Vauxhall can not have 
forgotten it — its central rotunda, and the pleasant avenues of trees, 
hung with a gorgeous blaze of lamps. Its site is now covered with 
factories and warehouses, and, perhaps, of its avenues of trees as 
little remains as of the variegated lamps that hung from them and 
illuminated the gardens nightly. 

One of the prime delights of London vanished when the gardens 
at Vauxhall were parceled into building-lots. One can almost im- 
agine the shade of the master of the ceremonies — neat and dapper 
little Simpson — haunting the lanes and alleys to mourn over 

" The long-faded glories they cover " — 

not looking for those glories "through the waves of time," but 
among and about "the endless pile of brick" that preserves no 
record of the olden time. 

For half a century at least, Vauxhall was, with the Tower, West- 
minster Abbey, and St. Paul's, one of the grand attractions that 
drew strangers to London. Few travelers to the great city, before 
railways were invented, returned to their homes without having en- 
joyed a concert in the Rotunda, and a supper in the gardens ; for 
the one they had nothing to pay, neither did the ten thousand col- 
ored lamps hung on the trees cost them anything beyond their en- 
trance-fees. But the supper was another thing. Vauxhall slices of 
ham were cut so delicately, that it was said by Lover, " They were so 
thin that you might read a newspaper through them " ; a fowl was a 
pearl of great price ; and the wine — well, taken altogether, the fare 
for half a dozen at a Vauxhall supper left little or nothing of a five- 
pound note. 

The ubiquitous master of the ceremonies was here, there, and 



SWEARING. 37 

everywhere — at the same time ! His inimitable bow and his greet- 
ing, " You are humbly welcome to the Royal Gardens ! " were seen 
and heard at one end of the Long Walk, and almost before an echo 
could have been audible, both greeted you at the other ! Every tree 
was hung with variegated lamps, arranged in graceful festoons, and 
of course in sentences that gave emphasis to the day of festival or 
victory they were designed to commemorate. The songs were always 
popular, many of them being written and composed for the occasion : 
Sung at Vauxhall " being a grand advertisement. 
No doubt an enormous deal of flirtation went on in the gardens, 
and many assignations were made in the well-lit alleys and around 
the orchestra, where loud-blown instruments rendered it needless to 
whisper low. But at no period of its existence was the place sub- 
jected to any charge of impropriety, far less of vice. The respecta- 
ble citizen took his wife and daughters to Vauxhall without scruple 
or dread ; and if an evening there made his purse somewhat lighter, 
it was by no means an unwholesome excitement, or one that led to a 
morning of repentance after a night ill spent. 

Music-Halls. — We have replaced Vauxhall now by the London 
music-halls. Cut bono ? one may well ask, as he compares, in fancy, 
the leafy, brightly lit gardens and their merry crowds, the noisy or- 
chestra, and the songs that, if somewhat silly and sentimental at 
times, were never such as a modest woman would blush to listen to 
— with the places redolent of drink and debauchery, in which all that 
is foolish and vicious among London youth gathers to applaud the 
indecent doggerel brayed forth by some impudent, loud-lunged vocal- 
ist in tones as destitute of melody as the despicable trash he shouts 
forth is of wit. Cut bono ? I repeat ; and who can answer the ques- 
tion ? or what frequenter of the modern music-hall has ever found 
anything that is good in those temples of vulgar vice ? 

Swearing. — Who now hears in the circles he frequents anything 
approaching an oath ? Sixty years ago men of all ranks swore, and 
thought it no offense against courtesy and decency to garnish their 
speeches with foul expletives, even in the presence of the other sex. 
Strange contrast between our social decorum then and now ! The 
man who would have shrunk from taking the wall of a lady, or from 
keeping his hat on in her presence, and who would have felt it a 
breach of good manners to offer her his arm while he kept his cigar 
in his mouth (practices common enough nowadays), never hesitated 
to swear an oath in her hearing, and thought it no offense either 
against delicacy or morals. That blur on morality, that blot on 
decency, is not a sin of the present day. 

I heard this anecdote of an eminent judge, who related it ex 
cathedra, called out by some case to which it was a propos. It is of a 
sea-captain, an " old salt," an example of the old school when oaths 



38 



SWEARING. 



seasoned conversation and flavored every third sentence that was 
uttered on board ship ; when it was held to be an incontrovertible 
truth that " he who didn't swear couldn't fight." Generally, how- 
ever, if not universally, no worse meaning was attached to such oaths 
than to a simple " yea " or " nay." A frigate which the old salt com- 
manded was ordered to convey the Princess Royal of the time to 
Germany. The captain was instructed by her Majesty, Queen Char- 
lotte, as to the care he should take of his precious charge. When 
she had landed he was to return immediately and report to the 
Queen how her daughter had borne her first voyage. He did so, of 
course, and was questioned by her Majesty somewhat minutely. 
" Well, ma'am, yer Majesty," replied he, in some confusion, to the 
opening interrogatory ; " yes, she bore the voyage very well. Wind ? 
Yes ; there was a capful. Sea-sick ? Oh yes, in course, a little. As 
we were going out of dock, she sent for me — ma'am, yer Majesty — 
into the cabin, and says she to me, says she, ' Captain, I'm afeared it 
do begin to blow.' So says I, ' Oh, your Royal Highness, it's noth- 
ing,' and it was nothing — ma'am, yer Majesty. Well, when we got 
past the Nore, it had come on a bit harder ; so she sends for me into 
the cabin again, and says she, ' Captain,' says she, ' I'm sure it do 
blow now.' So I said it wasn't anything, it didn't blow at all. And 
when we got into the open sea, the wind did give us a bit of a tearer, 
so her Royal Highness sends for me again to the cabin, and says she 

to me, says she, ' Well, Cappen, d my eyes if it don't blow now!' " 

I remember an anecdote of a Bishop of Cork, who, voyaging 
across the Channel in one of the sailing-packets, was much shocked 
by the oaths of the captain, and from reasoning and entreaty came 
to somewhat angry protest. " Ye see, my lord," said the captain, 
" unless I swear my men won't obey me ! " " Try them," urged the 
bishop ; "try them." So the skipper at last agreed to do so ; but, 
unknown to his lordship, he arranged a little comedy with the crew. 
Very soon it came on to blow afresh. " Tom," cried the captain, 
" coil that rope." Tom never moved, but stood chewing his quid. 
"Jack, Bill, Harry," said the skipper, "just oblige me by taking in 
the top-sail." Not a man stirred. The wind howled more and more 
loudly ; the vessel plunged heavily through the waves. Then the 
skipper turned to the pale-faced bishop, who was watching the result 
of the experiment. " My lord, my lord ! " said he in a terrified un- 
dertone ; "what am I to do ? If my men won't obey me we must all 
go to the bottom." " Well," said the bishop, slowly and reluctantly, 
"under the circumstances I — I think you may — swear — a little." 
No sooner said than done : a volley of oaths sent Jack, Bill, and 
Harry aloft and about as quick as lightning ; sails were furled, ropes 
coiled, and no more warnings against the sin of profanity were heard 
during that voyage at least.* 

* It was the late Chief-Justice Doherty who told me this anecdote. 



TURNPIKE-GATES. 39 

Turnpike-Gates. — It is not needful to go very far back to have 
a remembrance of the turnpike gates that environed London. Our 
bridges are now toll free ; pikes " have disappeared from the neigh- 
borhood of the Metropolis, and are gradually vanishing from other 
parts of the kingdom. But less than forty years ago all outlets from 
London were thus cumbered. Every horse and carriage had to stop 
that the toll might be paid, and a ticket received that freed the next 
gate — as usually it did. The pike I remember best is that which 
stood opposite my dwelling, " The Rosery," at Old Brompton, close 
to the Gloucester Road : a house-shed on one side of the road, a 
pillar on the other ; between the two a thick, heavy pole, loosened 
when carriages or horses had to pass through, the turnpike-keeper 
carefully stopping each, until the toll was exchanged for a ticket 
containing the number of the day. Payment was not exacted for 
the same carriage more than once a day, up to twelve o'clock, unless 
there were a " fresh load " ; but a minute after the hour struck it was 
due. It will be readily believed that, as a consequence of this regu- 
lation, quarrels between pikemen and equestrians were frequent.* 

It was by no means rare, in comparatively lonesome places, for 
the keeper to be asleep, and deaf to the continued call, " Gate, 
gate ! " Now and then he was roused just as the clock had struck 
the " witching hour " ; a lively dispute followed, but the keeper was 
on the right side, and deaf to all protests. Now and then the gate 
was accidentally left open, and some daring or dishonest rider gal- 
loped through scot-free. And in some places the keeper, wishing 
for a night's rest, would purposely leave it open when he retired, and 
all comers had free passage through it.f 

The turnpike-gate was a nuisance as well as a heavy tax. What 
would people now say if a turnpike-gate stretched across Hyde Park 
Corner, a yard or two west of Apsley House and the entrance-gate 
to Constitution Hill, as it did some fifty years ago, when every pass- 
ing carriage was stopped to pay the toll, or for examination of the 
ticket obtained by previous passage ? The annoyance and incon- 
venience were considerable ; but the cost was not a trifling matter. 
Often as much as five shillings was levied by way of toll on a two- 

* I knew a gentleman who had been delayed at the gate until the hour had 
struck, and had been compelled to pay as a consequence. He hit upon an ingenious 
mode of vengeance. It was a fine night, so he rode leisurely a mile or so, then 
back, and roused up the gatekeeper, showed his ticket, and was let through. At 
the end of another quarter of an hour he was back, and again roused the pikeman 
from his comfortable sleep. The act was repeated again and again, until the gate- 
keeper was well content to return him his sixpence, and bid him depart in peace. 

f I was traveling in Ireland in 1840 on one of the outside jaunting-cars. The 
boy who drove me, seeing on the road a turnpike-gate that was open, turned round 
and hurriedly said, " Yer honor, will I pay the pike or boult it? " "Bolt it," said 
I. " Hurrah ! " he exclaimed as he dashed through, delighted at the chance. 
Nothing could exceed his disgust when I ordered him to drive back and pay the 
gatekeeper his threepence. 



40 



FUNERALS. 



horse carriage during a dozen miles. It is hardly worth while in- 
quiring how and when the impost for keeping roads in repair was 
transferred from the gates to the parish rates ; but the change is 
surely one on which the British public may be congratulated, although 
it does press hardly on those who never either ride or drive, but 
have to pay to the parish just as much as my lord or Sir Squire, who 
keeps a dozen carriages and a score of horses. 

Funerals were costly ceremonials fifty — nay, twenty — years ago ; 
but thanks to a more intelligent spirit, and to the exertions of sev- 
eral rational advocates, we have changed, or are rapidly changing, 
all that ; the funerals of to-day are of a very different character 
from those of the early part of the century. 

Picture a funeral as it was, not very long ago : 

The blinds are drawn, the shutters closed ; gloom and darkness 
are supposed to indicate lamentation and woe ; not a footfall is heard, 
not a sound except the screw entering the last home of wood ; of 
deal it may be, or more likely of elm, oak, or mahogany, for respect 
will not be accorded duly unless there is great charge for the coffin, 
nor will the worms have considerate knowledge of the status of the 
new arrival ; moreover, the brass or gilt ornaments will last much 
longer than the habitation from which the soul has gone.* 

Invited guests assemble, with the conventional aspects of grief — 
received by domestics who wear the mourning garments they have 
not to pay for. Each guest as he comes (sacred custom has deter- 
mined that no women-mourners shall be present) is asked for his 
hat, that it may be enveloped in black silk at twelve shillings a yard ; 
he is questioned as to the size of his hand, and receives a pair of 
black gloves, value (as the bill will tell the executors) four shillings 
and sixpence. " Refreshments " are on the table ; wines of various 
kinds, to be taken cautiously, but far less sparingly when the cortege 
returns. Outside, leaning against either lintel of the door, from an 
early hour, two men habited in quaint attire, and called " mutes," 
have been standing ; each bears in his hand a kind of closed banner 
of silk, which, if the day be wet, he is expected to screen as much 
as possible from the rain. It is a hired accessory, and will be required 
by many other dead customers. Now and then one of the two will 
slink away ; the morning is raw, and the public-house nigh at hand ; 
so that when the eventful moment arrives, the lugubrious looks of 
the pair of — imbibers — are in harmony with the doleful scene ; they, 
at all events — 

"Mimic sorrow when the heart's not sad." 

The carriages draw up, the state-carriage being kept a little in 

* It has been reported that an eccentric lady shod her carriage-horses with sil- 
ver. It was more rational than to decorate with costly metal the tenement that is 
to be sunk six feet below the turf. 



FUNERALS. 4I 

arrear, until the cue is given for its entrance on the stage ; the 
horses, jet black (either by nature or dye-stuffs), have been trained 
to funereal paces ; sleek and glossy they are, and idlers always, ex- 
cept when on duty. The carriages are, of course, black ; the drivers 
have " inky cloaks " ; the attendants are in black, their coats have 
been laid by in lavender to be ready at call ; the hearse, duly deco- 
rated, and garnished with huge black feathers, that wave about in 
solemn emphasis, approaches ; the friends assembled in the dining- 
room hear a bustle on the stairs ; sobs may be heard on the upper 
landing, but elsewhere all is whispered silence. A sorrow-seeming 
person, master of the ceremonies, who is calculating the day's profit, 
calls out, one by one, the guests — motioning each to the carriage he 
is to enter ; and when the allotted tally is complete, the procession 
crawls slowly from the house, followed, perhaps, by a score of 
"private carriages," that have no occupants except the coachmen 
and footmen, who have not wasted the waiting hour — a public-house 
being so invitingly near. If it be a " grand funeral," at least a score 
of half-tipsy men, suitably dressed, and with features properly com- 
posed, walk at either side. By-and-by they will return — having 
done their duty — in a glad and gleesome mood ; the dead are safe 
paymasters. 

" Arrayed upon the hearse in rows, 
They laugh away like carrion crows, 
At Death's omnipotence ! " 

If it be a "poor funeral," half a dozen only will have to be re- 
munerated for a day of simulated grief ; each of them, it may be, 
when the business is done, will ask the name of the dead man or 
woman he has thus mourned and honored ! In due time — a mile to 
the hour — the bodies, quick and dead, have reached the station- 
terminus — the graveyard. There is another, marshaling by the " con- 
tractor " ; a crowd take seats at either side of the raised coffin ; a 
service of some sort is gone through (in the Church of England the 
undertaker supplies little black-covered books — gratis as far as re- 
cipients are concerned, yet profitable to the publisher), and in the 
same formal order the corpse is followed to the ready-dug grave. 
There the grave-digger, in his work-a-day dress, stands ready, pre- 
pared with a handful of gravel to fling upon the coffin, that will echo 
the hollow sound when the officiating priest utters the words " ashes 
to ashes, dust to dust." The funeral guests depart ; all is over, until 
the stone-mason arrives to do his part, and the undertaker's bill 
comes in — to " tax " which is considered an insult to the brother or 
sister " here departed " — the burial fees are paid, and the mourning 
establishment — the maison de deuil — contributes its quota to the cost. 

" A flower above, the mold below ; 
And that is all the mourners know." 



42 DRUNKENNESS. 

Drunkenness. — Who at the present time ever sees a gentleman 
drunk in a drawing-room ? If he were so, never again would he be 
an invited guest in that house. In fact, open drunkenness is a vice 
altogether of the past among the higher and middle classes, and 
even in a very mixed party a drunkard is as little expected as a pick- 
pocket. Alas ! it is less rare now than it was sixty years ago to 
notice a lady the worse for wine. There are few who have not seen 
at least one lady at a party drink glass after glass of champagne — 
seldom failing to secure a fresh supply as the waiter goes his rounds, 
and finishing up with draughts of sherry, until in the drawing-room 
her flushed face and muddled speech give terrible indications that 
she had made busy use of her time before the signal for separation 
was given by the hostess. At the period of which I write, it would 
have been as much anticipated that a lady would take off her gown 
in a drawing-room, as that she would be seen in any degree intoxi- 
cated. No doubt this appalling vice has been largely promoted by 
the facilities afforded, if not suggested, by legislation ; and it is as 
easy for a lady who has credit at a grocer's to have a bottle of brandy 
as a pound of tea set down in the bill ! I knew an instance where a 
gentleman, astonished at the quantity of tea consumed in his house- 
hold, called at the shop to inquire and protest. The tradesman was 
forced to explain : the charges for green tea were in reality for 
spirits ! Many confectioners are now licensed to sell wine. Not 
long ago I saw a most respectably clad woman in one of these shops 
pay for a glass of sherry and a bun — the one she drank, the other 
she put into her reticule. I had the curiosity to follow her ; she 
entered three other confectioners' shops, and did the same thing in 
each of them ! 

The increase of intemperance among women is the plague-spot 
of the period. There are several " Retreats " — let us so call them — 
where ladies submit to restraint, and willingly sanction the withhold- 
ing of stimulants ; where, in fact, alcoholic beverages are as entirely 
kept from them as they would be if the unhappy inebriates were the 
inmates of jails. At present such restraint is entirely voluntary, but 
it will soon be a question, strongly and sternly agitated, whether 
such restraint shall not in certain cases, and under certain circum- 
stances, be enforced by law. 

But if ladies seldom or never in the old days drank to excess, 
with gentlemen it was far otherwise. Drunkenness was a vice of 
which no gentleman was ashamed. All know the story of Pitt and 
Dundas. Entering the House of Commons, one of them could not 
see the Speaker, but the other saw two Speakers in the chair ! It 
was calculated, not without reason, that each bottle of port drunk 
by the great Prime Minister, on the afternoon that preceded an event- 
ful evening, cost the nation a million of money. 

My Recollections of Ireland — those more especially that regard 
the good Franciscan friar, Theobald Mathew — will furnish me with 



SMUGGLING. 



43 



much on this fertile topic ; but reference to it seems not desirable 
here, where I am summing up some of the changes wrought by Time. 

Smuggling. — Home manufacture, whether by licensed distillers, 
or by those who " brewed the mountain-dew without leave or license 
of the King," was not the only source of the evil. The smugglers 
were then busy on every part of the coast. 

Smuggling is now but the ghost of its former self : it was whole- 
sale, it is retail. Few articles of commerce now pay large duties, and 
free-trade has destroyed the calling of the free-trader. The Dirk 
Hatteraicks of to-day are the stokers of steamboats ; the fights be- 
tween the gangs and the coast-guard, still more the revenue-cutters 
and the smuggling schooners, are legends of the past, and have be- 
come almost as obsolete as the " wreckers " who, a century back, 
hung out false lights to lure a ship upon a fatal rock. 

But fifty or sixty years ago the business was largely carried on, 
and gentlemen of rank and station thought it no degradation, much 
less a crime, to engage in it. 

There are few places along the south coast of Ireland — and it is 
much the same in England and Scotland — without traditionary 
smugglers' caves, but there are not many living people who have seen 
them filled with brandy, tea, tobacco, and often lace and silks, that 
were never meant to pay a tax to the revenue. I visited more than 
one of them, when so converted into warehouses, and heard anec- 
dotes in abundance of the reckless daring and excessive cunning 
requisite to convey the goods into town-markets. Occasionally, no 
doubt, this traffic was connived at by some magistrate, who was not 
above giving house-room to a " keg " some lucky accident had left 
at his hall-door ; while it was by no means rare to find the gauger 
himself in league with the smuggler ! 

The schemes that were devised to convey the smuggled goods 
from the coast were often singular and somewhat comic. Not unfre- 
quently, the trick took the shape of a coffin borne by mournful rela- 
tives to the graveyard ; the bearers chanting the praises of the dead, 
the bereaved widow sitting by the side of the lamented husband, all 
the other trappings of woe conspicuous, the respectful sympathies of 
passers-by not omittted. Sometimes the coffin was actually placed 
in the grave, and covered over, to be disinterred at night and re- 
lieved of its load of tea and tobacco, which rapidly found its way to 
the dealers waiting to receive it. 

So many writers have circumstantially described and illustrated 
these facts that it is needless for me to go at any length into the sub- 
ject. I may, however, add one anecdote to the abundance that may 
be found in books. In 1818 I was a visitor at a house in the vicin- 
ity of Castle Townsend, in the County of Cork. My host was a gen- 
tleman high in position, and of ancient descent, and my summer 
holiday was spent at his large and proverbially hospitable mansion 



44 



SMUGGLING. 



on the sea-coast. Some of his descendants being still alive, it is not 
expedient to give either his name or that of his house. He was then 
about the most extensive smuggler in Ireland, and had reconciled his 
conscience to his calling on the ground that he had been heavily 
fined for some comparatively venial offense against the revenue laws. 
I had frequently expressed to his sons a desire to see something of 
the proceedings of a regular smuggling raid, and especially to visit 

one of the smuggling-ships. There was a grand ball at , the 

two military officers of the neighboring garrison were there, so was 
the commissioner of the excise. When the party broke up there was 
no leaving at so late an hour, and shake-downs were improvised for 
at least forty tired and more than half-tipsy guests. A hint was given 
to me to be wide awake, and an hour or so after midnight I found my- 
self hurrying down from the house to the shore. The beach was 
crowded with vehicles of every description, the common cars being 
by far the most numerous. These cars were rapidly filling and pass- 
ing off. In a picturesque cave sat my host, a rude table covered 
with bank-notes before him. He was receiving money and giving 
orders for the delivery of tobacco, gin, brandy, tea, and other com- 
modities which were unloaded from the boats, as they put in to the 
shore from a vessel anchored a few cables' lengths off. Of course I 
soon availed myself of one of the returning boats to take passage to 
the ship, and was cordially greeted by the captain, who welcomed 
me to his cabin with " schnapps " — veritable Hollands, beyond ques- 
tion. While thus enjoying ourselves an alarm was given. It was 
well known that a revenue-cutter lay moored on the other side of an 
intervening promontory ; the hatches were at once battened down and 
preparations made for resistance. As there was no boat alongside, I 
should have been in the position of the daw with stolen feathers, but, 
fortunately, the intruder was merely a fishing-hooker. She was made 
to heave-to ; compensation was given for the delay by sending an ank- 
er of spirits on board, and I was not sorry to find myself in the last 
boat making for the shore. When I landed, there was hardly a trace 
of the proceedings of the night : smugglers, carts, goods, and custom- 
ers had vanished, and I met with no interruption in returning to my 
bedroom, which I reached just as day was dawning, to find the two 
military officers, the revenue officer and his son, sleeping the sleep of 
the innocent. They had known nothing of the night's work, carried 
on under their very noses ; the soldiers and the coast-guard had in- 
deed been roused, but there was no superior to give them orders, 
and they remained quiescent until breakfast-time, when men and 
masters met to lament over the loss — not to the revenue, but to the 
officials, by whom a seizure might have been made. 

It is little wonder that the calling of the smuggler was a tempt- 
ing, because a profitable one. Everything was taxed ; whatever one 
wore, whatever one ate, the newspaper one read, the paper on which 
it was printed, the very candle one read it by, all were made to con- 



HATRED OF THE FRENCH. 45 

tribute to the national revenue. Salt was taxed so heavily that its 
importation became one of the many sources of profit to the smug- 
gler. The house-tax was a terrible burden ; every window being 
rated at so much, with the result that many were bricked up, to the 
lessening of light and air, and the prejudice of health.* 

Every private person was a smuggler more or less. Ladies who 
went to France, or for that matter to Ireland, undeniably slender, 
returned immoderately stout. Their dresses were padded out with 
lace and gloves, of which sometimes the searchers deprived them. 
I remember hearing of a dog that was frequently taken across the 
Channel to Paris and back. It was at last noticed that he always 
went over thin and came back fat ; he was seized, carefully exam- 
ined, and it was discovered that he had been fitted with another skin 
over his natural one, and that between the two a quantity of valuable 
lace was stowed away. 

Hatred of the French. — Sixty years ago France was consid- 
ered the natural foe of England, and England of France. The 
threatened invasion of the first Napoleon and the enthusiasm with 
which, in 1800 to 1805, more than 200,000 volunteers sprang to 
arms, were in my young days matters fresh in the recollection of 
all.f 

I can well remember the earliest lesson I received from my father 
— an officer of the good old school of pigtails and hair-powder. 
The lesson was this : he would put me on his knee, pat me on the 
head, and say, " Be a good boy, love your mother, and hate the 
French." Such counsel would be almost invariably followed up by 
this : " Now, my boy, if you meet six Frenchmen, run away ; if there 
are three, lick them ! " Such was the invariable teaching received 
by boys, of all ages, early in the century. Three Frenchmen were 
thought but a fair match for one Englishman, and I believe nine out 
of ten of the soldiers of the Peninsula considered three to one 
made even forces. There can not be the slightest doubt that the 
belief — prejudice — call it what we please — thus inculcated as it were 

* I remember a caricature : A woman at a chandler's shop buying a halfpenny 
candle was told the price was raised to three farthings. " What's that for ? " she 
asked. " On account of the war, good woman," was the answer. " 'Od rot em ! " 
she exclaimed ; " do they fight by candle-light ? " 

_ f France was growling a similar threat some twenty-five years ago, when the 
third Napoleon was pressed by his marshals to do what no one knew better than 
he knew, would have been madness — attempt a landing on our coasts. At that 
time I was in Paris, and had the honor of conversing on the subject with one of 
his most distinguished generals. He was explaining to me the feasibility of the 
plan, and concluded a long harangue by saying, "You know we have plenty of 
transports." " Yes," I said, " and you will want them ; but one will suffice to bring 
you back ! " I think I see the old soldier now, with his look of indignation, as he 
suddenly rose and left the room without a word. 



4 6 BROWN BESS. 

from the cradle, was the source to which England owes many of her 
victories, both by land and sea.* 

Many will remember Dibdin's song (universally popular when I 
was young) of the fight between a French ship and " the gallant 

Arethusa " : 

" On deck five hundred men did dance, 
The stoutest they could find in France ; 
We with TWO hundred did advance 
On board of the Arethusa ! " 

How many sea-fights were won for England by Charles Dibdin ? 
More, probably, than — if we except Nelson and some other half- 
dozen famous sea-lions — by all her admirals put together. 

I am neither soldier nor sailor, but I can sympathize with any 
member of either noble profession who has attained my age, and is 
left to mourn over the ease with which villainous saltpeter finds its 
way into, and out of, rifled cannon of the eighty-ton species, or who 
remembers with regret even the tarry trousers that have given place 
to the smoke and soot of the stoker ; while the old " yo-heave-ho " 
is ousted by the " stop her " of an engineer, who rules the waves as 
the viceroy of Britannia. 

Brown Bess was the arbiter of all battle-fields ; as clumsy a pro- 
genitor of the Martini-Henry rifle as a Flemish mare would be of a 
thorough-bred racer. They are curiosities in museums now. The 
flint-locks were always out of order. The flint had to be clipped 
after use, so that it might act well on the iron pan ; yet, every other 
shot was a " miss fire," and aims were so uncertain, from weapons so 
imperfect, that every slain man was popularly held to " cost his 
weight in lead ! " Moreover, the weapon was so heavy that in a 
retreat it was usually thrown away to lessen the incumbrances of the 
" retreater." The soldier in battle did the same with the pasteboard 
stock that, at all times, nearly throttled him, and with his cartouche- 
box and knapsack. His dress, indeed, could scarcely have been 
better devised, if its declared intention had been to impede his 
movements, whether in advance or retreat. Officers were not much 
better off with their loads of gold lace, their hair-powder, and their 
pigtails, and were never ready for the field until an hour had been 
spent under the hands of the barber. 

That was a memorable answer of a life-guardsman to a question 

* I can not say how it is now, but about thirty years ago when I visited " the 
Invalides," the great Hall was hung with the banners of every military power — 
except the English. Of English flags there was not one. A venerable custodian 
who had shared in a hundred fights took me round, and with the pride of the sol- 
dier and the Frenchman (either would have been ample) named to me, one after 
another, the battles of which they were the prizes. When he had made an end of 
that long and splendid battle-roll, I startled him by the simple and natural ques- 
tion, "And where are the English ?" He made me no answer, but turned away 
with a changed and gloomy look. There was not one ! 



THE QUEUE. 47 

put by the Duke of Wellington at a court of inquiry relative to con- 
templated changes in regimentals. " What sort of a dress would you 
like to fight in ? " asked the Duke. " Well, your Grace," replied the 
humbler hero, " I'd like best to fight in my shirt-sleeves ! " Perhaps 
one of the most irksome and irritating parts of a soldier's dress was 
the high, stiff stock. 

In those days children of ten years old were sometimes officers 
and in receipt of the King's pay. It is a well-authenticated fact that 
a lady was a cornet of dragoons, her commission having been dated 
some weeks before she was born. The fact of the infant proving a 
girl entailed no other inconvenience than that of giving her a Chris- 
tian name that did not designate her sex. 

My brother (killed at Albuera in 1811) was an officer in my fa- 
ther's regiment, wore regimentals, and received pay when he was 
eight years old. There was no discredit attached to such appoint- 
ments. It was one of the colonel's "perquisites." The abomi- 
nable practice was put a stop to by the Duke of York. 

My father wore powder and the queue until his death. The 
powder was made, I believe, of potato-starch, kept on by a previous 
rubbing of pomatum.* 

In 1795 Pitt proposed to levy a tax on hair-powder, which — bas- 
ing his calculations on its widespread use — he estimated would in- 
crease the revenue annually by some ,£200,000. The Act was passed, 
but, as nearly every one left off using powder, it was almost unpro- 
ductive. Those who persevered in the fashion paid a guinea a year 
for the privilege, and enjoyed in consequence the nickname of 
"guinea-pigs." 

The military queue was a long strip of hair growing from the 
back of the head ; we see its prototype in portraits of Chinese man- 
darins. It was tied by black ribbon, and was considered a sort of 
challenge to " catch me if you can " when running away. Many, no 
doubt, have lost their heads, in the literal sense of the words, in con- 
sequence of the convenient handle afforded to a pursuing foeman by 
the queue. 

_ * The fashion of powdering the hair, it may be well to note, is of vast antiquity 
being traceable as far back as the luxurious days of ancient Rome, when gold-dust 
was used for that purpose. Among the Anglo-Saxons colored powders were used, 
blue being the color most often adopted in the illuminations. In the time of Queen 
Elizabeth, and later, the hair was often washed with a lixivium of chalk to give it 
a lighter and redder hue ; the fair, or rather yellow, hair of the virgin queen setting 
the fashion and making the custom pretty general. Later, Charles James Fox is 
said to have powdered his hair with blue powder. He is described in the Monthly 
Magazine for 1S06 as having been in his day one of the most fashionable young 
men about town, and as having his " chapeau-bras, his red-heeled shoes, and his 
blue hair-powder." Until very recently, hair-powder was on the list of taxed 
articles. 



4 8 



PRESS-GANGS. 



In the Army and Navy. — The changes I have witnessed — to 
record a tithe of them would fill a volume — all would describe ad- 
vance and improvement : no officer can now be appointed without 
sufficient evidence of his mental and physical capacity to discharge 
the duties he has to undertake. We have selected from a lower class 
of candidates, it is true, although we have not yet, to any marked 
extent, promoted men from the ranks. 

We had once a servant who married a soldier, who became, for 
his gallantry in the Crimea, a commissioned officer. His social posi- 
tion was, therefore, hers ; and she was miserable. As " an officer's 
lady," she must not associate with her former comrades : she could 
not be received by the ladies of the garrison. She complained in 
terms almost of agony to her former mistress. Her husband was not 
able to keep a servant, for her new duties were expensive. Her life 
was lonely and wretched : the change was in no way beneficial to 
either. I shall never forget the tone in which she concluded a list 
of the grievances arising out of her new dignity — " And he won't let 
me go for my own half-pint of porter ! " Those who advocate the 
promotion of soldiers from the ranks, will do well to remember that 
such officers usually have wives. 

Press-Gangs. — People must be old who remember the "press- 
gangs." They were bands of sailors belonging to ships that were 
called " tenders " ; their business was to entrap merchant-seamen, or 
landsmen, and, very soon afterward, transfer them to war-frigates, 
compelling them to enter his Majesty's service. In short, into that 
service they were " pressed." It mattered not whom the man-hunters 
found, nor where they found them : any male from fourteen to forty 
was seized, manacled, and taken on board. It was a hazard to be 
out and about, at night, without a "protection," that is to say, a 
signed paper which signified that the bearer was exempted ; but often 
these papers were, on one excuse or another, disregarded and ren- 
dered unavailing. 

It was supposed to be the only way of manning the navy ; the 
practice was generally detested, but it flourished none the less, and 
was sanctioned by law, authorized by the Admiralty, and sustained 
by the magistracy throughout the kingdom. The country wanted 
sailors, and they must be had by fair means or foul — such being the 
only argument that was heeded. I can remember gentlemen of rank 
and wealth who were thus " pressed," and condemned to pass days 
in the holds of filthy ships before interference on their behalf led to 
their discharge. Often a poor fellow just home from a long voyage, 
and full of the hope that he should shortly join his family, and pour 
his hard-earned wages into the lap of his longing wife, was seized as 
he stepped on shore and forced to make another voyage. Working- 
men of every class were afraid to walk the streets after nightfall ; but 
even their homes afforded no protection, while to enter a public- 



PRIVATEERS. 49 

house, especially in river-side districts, was to run into the very jaws 
of danger. 

In 1 8 1 1 my brother was a midshipman on board the jE/iza tender ; 
Captain Kortright * was a personal friend of my father's, and it was 
thought a good school in which to train him for the navy. He was 
afterward transferred to the Niobe frigate. Although I was very 
young then, I can recollect his descriptions of some of the scenes in 
which he was engaged — the bloody scenes that frequently preceded 
capture, when entrapped fathers and husbands resisted by force a 
fate that was to many worse than death. 

It is needless to say that the men who composed the press-gang 
were generally reckless ruffians, who had no sympathy for the suffer- 
ers ; they received as bounty so much per man ; the most reckless 
and daring were of course the most successful ; gangs frequently 
cruised into hamlets, distant from any sea-port, where they were little 
expected, and desolated villages by captures. Each seaman had a 
cutlass, and the gang was headed by a lieutenant, or often a boy-mid- 
shipman, who was thus educated to the after-tyranny that formed so 
prominent a part in naval life. Pictures, the truth of which admit 
of no question, will be found in many books of naval fiction, notably 
in the popular novels of Captain Marryat. 

Privateers. — Akin to this subject is that of the "privateers," the 
licensed pirates, for such they were, of the early part of the century. 
Fitted up, armed, and manned by private speculators, who sent these 
sharks to scour the high seas in quest of whatever prey was worth 
capture, privateers were little scrupulous as to what kind of victim 
they pounced upon. They were commanded for the most part by 
daring and reckless men, with abundance of brute courage, and their 
crews were generally the scum of the jails, who, being paid by the 
job, made few inquiries as to the nationality of whatever prize they 
took. I knew one of these privateer captains, the hero of the follow- 
ing incident : 

He had given a berth in his cabin to a prisoner of war, and, in 
the night, awoke just in time to feel a pistol at his cheek. He had 
presence of mind enough not to try and spring up, but quickly and 
quietly lifting his finger moved the weapon aside. It was discharged 
into the pillow, and in an instant more he had his cutlass in his grasp 
and his treacherous guest was cut down. He carried the marks of 
the powder with him to the grave, so near to his face did the pistol 
explode. The captain was sheriff of Cork, and on more than one 
occasion his courage and intrepidity did the state good service. 

At the time of which I write there were many thousand prisoners 

* Miss Frances Aiken Kortright, the author of many excellent and popular 
novels, one of my personal friends, and the esteemed friend of Mrs. S. C. Hall, is 
one of the daughters of my father's friend, Commander Kortright, R. N. 

4 



50 



DOMESTIC SERVANTS. 



of war scattered about in English prisons ; little comfort had they, 
and very limited supplies of food. Now and then they escaped : a 
matter not easy, for few could speak the language of their jailers, 
and sometimes they were exchanged, though not often, for English 
prisoners in France were as one to ten in comparison with the num- 
ber of Frenchmen detained on British soil. 

I might greatly enlarge a theme so attractive to a man who has 
known many of the veterans who shared with Nelson the glories of 
the Nile and Trafalgar, or conquered with Wellington at Waterloo — 
our warfare by land and sea in the early years of this century, and 
the kind of fighters it bred. Perhaps an anecdote or two selected 
from the many I have heard from the lips of officers, military and 
naval, will bring the class of men who were heroes more vividly be- 
fore my readers than pages of description could. 

At a public dinner some years ago I was seated next to an aged 
naval officer, who made some remark as to my neither eating nor 
drinking. On my telling him it was because I was appointed to 
make a speech during the evening, he said I reminded him of an old 
admiral with whom he had sailed, and related the following anec- 
dote : 

" We had fought and taken a French ship. After the battle it 
was my duty, as a matter of form, to report the result. I found the 
admiral, evidently in a mood of great irritation, pacing up and down 
like a bear with a sore head — pens and paper scattered over the 
cabin-table. ' Sir,' I said, ' I have the pleasure to report to you that 

the ship has struck and is our prize.' Receiving no answer, I 

repeated the words ; still the admiral gave no heed. In a tone that 
no doubt indicated annoyance I was beginning a third time, when 
the old fellow struck in sharply : ' Yes, yes, I know ; we've fought a 
battle and won it ; but the worst of it's to come ! ' ' May I ask, sir, 
what that is?' I inquired. 'Yes,' he said, pointing to the scattered 
papers before him ; ' there's that d — d letter to the Admiralty ! ' He 
could fight a battle and win it ; but draw up an official report for the 
perusal of their Lordships — ah, no ! Not long afterward I was tell- 
ing this story to another old naval officer. He gave me a pendent to 
it. Said he : ' I once sailed with a captain who was ordered on a 
three-years' cruise. He received a state paper with a long string of 
instructions — to do this, that, and the other. On his return it was 
his duty to make his report. How to do it was another thing. He 
cut the matter short by taking the paper that contained his instruc- 
tions, and adding to each item the single phrase, ' Done't,' ' Done't,' 
' Done't,' signed the document, and sent it in for the edification of 
their Lordships at the Admiralty." 

Domestic Servants. — In the days of which I write, there were 
no " Servants' Clubs " ; neither dancing nor music lessons were 
deemed necessary to complete the education of a housemaid or a 



DRESS. 5 r 

lady's-maid. Service was not an inheritance then any more than it 
is now, but the proudest boast of those who served was length of 
servitude. To have seen as a wedded wife and mother the child she 
had placed in its cradle, was a glory and a distinction which the con- 
queror of a hundred battle-fields might have envied. 

Nowadays the cookery-book is not in the mind but on the shelf. 
What " maid-of-all-work " receives a letter that is not addressed 
" Miss " ? What gown comes home to her without flounces and fur- 
belows ? Ah ! it would be easy to make out a long list of changes, 
indicating that servitude means only so much labor for so much pay, 
and that such as old Adam gave to Orlando exists only as a forgot- 
ten memory or a myth. " To make herself ' generally useful ' " rarely 
enters into the contemplation of a domestic servant : her " duties " 
must be subservient to her " rights." What has been gained, and 
what lost, on this march of intellect, I leave readers to determine 
who compare things new with things old. 

I have a friend who knows when her neighbor is away from home 
by the perpetual strumming of a piano in the adjoining house ; it is 
not " Polly put the Kettle On " that is played, but some composition 
of Beethoven or Mozart. I have another friend whose servant stip- 
ulated for a half-holiday every Thursday — that being the day on 
which her dancing-master received his pupils. She cared little how to 
hem and to sew, and made no preparation for the change that might 
assign to her the duties of wife and mother ; she could neither make 
a pudding nor darn a stocking, but shone in a polka, and was fasci- 
nating in a waltz. We must consult old newspapers for the express- 
ive passage, he or she " served fifty years as a faithful servant " in 
the family of So-and-so. Yet such inscriptions are by no means rare 
upon headstones in our churchyards. It has been my happy destiny 
to make such a record twice. 

Dress. — What changes there have been in dress ! To take, as ' 
both gallantry and the nature of the subject demand, the case of the 
gentler sex first — how strange would a beauty of 1820 look in the 
eyes of a beauty of 1883 ! Where are the full sleeves, the huge pro- 
jecting bonnet, and ringlets elaborately arranged ? Gone — gone 
after the hoops and hair-mountains of a century earlier. And the 
men, too, where are their elaborate neckcloths, tight-waisted coats, 
flowered vests, and Hessian boots ? — in these days a gentleman's am- 
bition as regards costume is apparently that he may be undistin- 
guishable from his groom ! 

In my younger days I was somewhat associated with the Wes- 
leyan Methodists. Simplicity in worship was their rule, and equally 
in costume. In their chapels — the architecture of which was as bar- 
ren of ostentation as the audience — the men sat on one side, the 
women on the other, and listened with decorous attention to a 



52 GRAVEYARDS. 

preacher as plainly habited as themselves. For any sister of the sect 
to have adorned her bonnet with a bow of ribbon, her bosom with a 
brooch or locket, or her ears with ear-rings, would have been a sure 
sign that she was not wholly out of the dominion of Satan. I do not 
know what changes time has wrought within, but without they have 
been " prodigious," as any man who enters one of the handsome 
buildings — miniature cathedrals — in which the majority of Wesleyan 
congregations now worship, may ascertain for himself. 

Nay, even the " Friends " have to a great extent identified their 
appearance with that of the every-day world. One sees little of drab 
or broad-brim now — common as both were in my youth. I do not 
offer an opinion on these changes ; I only chronicle them among 
other "things that have been." 

Alas ! nowadays it is common to see clergymen of the English 
Church wearing, not only beards, but mustaches, in their pulpits, 
while occasionally one meets nonconforming ministers so outwardly 
adorned.* Thus they effectually hide the expression of the most 
eloquent of the features, mouthing the words they utter, or mutter, 
and smothering the " glad tidings of great joy." 

In quitting the theme of personal appearance " now and then," 
let me make a final note. When I was a young man beards were 
worn by none but Jews, and mustaches were the almost exclusive 
adornments of dragoons ; but few men were without whiskers, and 
some cultivated them to an enormous and, as would be now thought, 
fantastic extent. I recall an incident that created considerable 
amusement at the time of its occurrence. A notorious Irish duelist 
was tried for shooting at a brother fire-eater, not on the " field of 
honor," be it understood, but without preliminaries and in a public 
place. Fortunately for the accused, it was an Irish jury with whom 
he had to deal ; and he readily brought them to see that there had 
been no thought in his mind of taking life, or even of wounding. 
He had simply been jealous of the other man's whiskers, and had 
wanted to spoil them, which, for the time at least, he did. In court 
an overwhelming amount of testimony was brought to prove his un- 
erring aim ; among other witnesses, the wife of the accused swore 
she had often held a half-crown between her finger and thumb for 
her husband to shoot away. The jury acquitted him, being satisfied 
that had murder been in his mind he could as readily have deprived 
his adversary of life as of a whisker. 

Are there many who can go even so far back in memory and see 
the Graveyards, appendages of churches, that degraded and dis- 
graced, not only the Metropolis, but every city and large town of the 
empire, appalling to the sight, offensive to the nostrils, creating dis- 

* Not long ago I breakfasted with a Baptist minister who wore a mustache. 



TELEGRAPHS. c a 

ease and spreading it — the terrible allies of Death ? Yet I well re- 
member the fierce opposition to the project of Suburban Ceme- 
teries, and the bitter hostility with which all its advocates were 
encountered. When (in 1840) the scheme was promulgated by Mr. 
Carden (a gentleman connected in some way with the Times), it 
was cried down as worse than wicked ; not only a shameful invasion 
of vested rights, but un-English and unchristian. I was then editing 
the Britannia, and gave the project my warmest support ; not that 
alone — the body of my father was, I think, the seventh interred in 
the cemetery at Kensal Green. Now there is not, perhaps, five per 
cent of the whole British people who do not rejoice that so great a 
change has been wrought by Time. Now there is hardly a town in 
England where is not to be found an improved copy of the once ex- 
clusively renowned Pere-la-Chaise ; full of beautiful flowers, fre- 
quently recruited ; abundantly enriched by flowering shrubs and 
trees ; where death is deprived of its gloomy aspect, with something 
akin to its promise of a happy Hereafter.* 

Of Railways I have made no note : they have more than doub- 
led the lives of most men. It has, I think, sufficed to have said 
that in 1820 I made the journey from London to Bristol within the 
then " unprecedented " period of twenty hours; and that in 1882 
the same journey was made by me in two hours and a half. It is 
by no means rare to breakfast in London and dine in Edinburgh be- 
tween sunrise and sunset. It is a daily occurrence for men to go 
from Manchester to London, transact important business, and be 
again in Manchester on the same day. Engagements may be made 
with certainty of their being kept, though when made the one party 
may be thousands of miles apart from the other. I know an instance 
of two friends — one in Egypt, the other in London — appointing a 
day for the one to breakfast with the other. Precisely as the clock 
struck nine, a rap was heard at the door of the London host. " Come 
in, Mr. Thompson," said he. And Mr. Thompson, from Alexandria, 
entered. 

As to Telegraphs, it is enough to say, and without a word of 
comment, every man in Great Britain may read in the day's news- 
paper what was doing, or had been done, yesterday, not only in 
every country of the Old World, but in every State of the New. 

I might write of many other changes that Time has brought 
about, but I will close my list with one, and close it appropriately, I 
think, in the case of a writer who has been for more than sixty years 

* I recall an anecdote told to me by Laman Blanchard : A lady was persuading 
her husband to bury their dead child at Kensal Green, because " it would be so 
convenient for a picnic." 



54 



VIGOR IN OLD AGE. 



connected with the Press. How wonderful a stride has the art of 
printing made between then and now ! Stand by the mighty machine 
that throws off with such marvelous speed and precision thousand 
after thousand of copies — not only printed at a single operation, but 
ready folded — of such a newspaper as the Times — and having ob- 
served its wondrous operations, so delicate but so sure, so complex 
yet so simple, realize the days when two men stood one on either 
side a wooden printing-press, the one to dab the type with a soft 
ball saturated with ink and place a sheet of paper over it, the other 
to lay above the sheet a " blanket," then a parchment over all, and 
to subject the whole to a pressure that, when the sheet was drawn 
back again and its covering removed, had only printed one side. 
Such was journalism then so far as that all-important functionary, 
the printer, was concerned. 

Many men I have known at a great age, who held important and 
responsible offices, or distinguished themselves by brilliant intellect 
and long-sustained vigor. Lord Palmerston held office as Prime 
Minister when he died, at the age of eighty-one ; the Duke of Wel- 
lington was Commander-in-Chief at eighty-two ; and Lord Hampton 
presided over the Social Science Congress at Leeds when his age 
exceeded fourscore years. Thiers became President of the French 
Republic at seventy-five ; Cockburn was Chief-Justice at a still 
greater age ; and Eldon, Lyndhurst, and Brougham bore years as 
thickly heaped upon them as were their honors. 

I heard Brougham speak for nearly two hours after he had passed 
eighty ; his words came forth as clearly and distinctly as they could 
have done in his prime. Sentence followed sentence as regularly 
and melodiously as the waves might break over a sandy shore ; his 
countenance, too, was lit up as in his youth ; his step as firm, his eye 
as bright, and his action as energetic ; his power to sway and con- 
trol his audience still irresistible. It was a thorough triumph over 
Time* 

* In 1882 I addressed an audience — the Committee of the Plymouth Free 
Library and their Friends, and spoke for more than two hours and a half, concern- 
ing the changes I had witnessed and the people I have known. I did that, stand- 
ing all the while, without once resting or sitting down. I may be permitted to 
introduce into this note a passage from The Western Antiquary : 
" Mr. S. C. Hall, F. S. A., at Plymouth. 
"The visit of this gentleman to Plymouth during the month of August, 18S2, 
should be chronicled in The Western Antiquary. Mr. Hall, having bequeathed his 
. library to the Free Public Library at Plymouth, was desirous of seeing the insti- 
tution in which his books would be placed, and of meeting some of those who were 
connected with its management. In connection with this munificent gift, Mr. 
Hall (at the request of the Library Committee) delivered an address on Thursday, 
August 24th, under the presidency of the Mayor (Mr. C. F. Burnard), entitled ' A 
Gossip about People I have Known.' One of the most remarkable features of this 
address was, that the veteran author (born in 1800) should have, with eloquence 



A YOUNG COLONEL. 55 

I may add a remarkable instance of vigor in old age to those of 
which I have made record. In 1842 I spent a week with Sir Francis 
Workman Macnaghten at Bushmills, in the county of Antrim. His 
father, Edmund Macnaghten, of Beardiville, was born in 1679, and 
married, first, Leonora, daughter of the Archbishop of Tuam. He 
married as his second wife a most estimable lady, Hannah, daughter 
of John Johnston, Esq., of Belfast, in 1761, he at the time of his 
marriage being eighty-two years of age. By this marriage he became 
the father of two sons, the elder of whom was a Lord of the Treas- 
ury from 1819 to 1830, and died without issue in 1832. The younger 
son, Francis, whom I visited, was born when his father was eighty- 
four years old. The father died in 1781 at the age of one hundred 
and two, and was succeeded by his younger son (my friend), who at 
the time of my visit was in his eightieth year, and had been created 
a baronet in 1836. Between the father's day of birth and the day 
of my visit to the son there had passed one hundred and sixty-three 
years ! Sir Francis was a fine, hale, handsome old man, vigorous 
and hearty. 

He certainly did startle me, when, sitting by his side at dinner, 
he said to me, " When my father served at the battle of the Boyne." 
But so it actually was : "Nay," he added, "he commanded a regi- 
ment at the siege of Derry, which was a year before the battle of the 
Boyne." That was quite true, of course ; but the " Colonel " of the 
regiment was a boy of eight or nine years old. His father was 
absent fighting with King William in England. The clansmen placed 
the lad at their head, and, under his " command," marched to the 
defense of glorious and immortal Londonderry. 

So recently as 1882, I read with pleasure the following paragraph 
in the Times — with great pleasure, for the eminent lawyer and ven- 
erable judge was one of my colleagues in the gallery of the old 
House of Commons, and a reporter for that journal : 

"To-morrow Vice-Chancellor Sir James Bacon will attain his eighty- 
fourth year. He is the oldest judge on the English Bench, having been born 
on February 11, 1798. The learned judge, who was appointed a Vice-Chan- 
cellor in June, 1870, also holds the office of Chief Judge in Bankruptcy, to 
which place he was appointed on the Bankruptcy Act of 1869 coming into 
operation." 

and telling effect, discoursed for two and a half hours, entirely from memory, stand- 
ing all the while, without a minute's cessation, and with no signs of physical ex- 
haustion. Mr. Hall's long life, his retentive memory, and the unusual opportunity 
he has had for becoming acquainted with the greatest men and women of the cent- 
ury, contributed in no small degree to render this address a high intellectual treat. 
Mr. Hall is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and, moreover, is deeply at- 
tached to Devonshire, his native county ; it is, therefore, little matter for wonder 
that he has taken a deep interest in the fine old historic town of Plymouth and all 
its associations, and that he is warmly interested in the success of The Western 
Antiquary, to which he has contributed on several occasions. EDITOR." 



56 OMISSIONS. 

In the course of this volume I have made reference to several 
other men of mark, who retained great bodily vigor and much men- 
tal power after they had lived far beyond fourscore years. 

I have thus exhibited " the mingled yarn, good and ill together," 
by showing some of the changes wrought by Time. 

Things that have been. — Such changes are by no means all 
for the worse : most of them are very much for the better. Some 
will, no doubt, excite astonishment that such " things " could have 
"been" — sacred gifts of our ancestors, far off or near. Yet I have 
made reference to none that did not come within my own experience, 
and that of many other living men and women. 

But I must bring to a close this part of my task. I am troubled 
by the knowledge that my sins of omission are very many. I could 
fill another fifty pages, and not, I think, weary my readers, with 
records of matters that come within my Recollections. I have still 
a long road to travel over in ' their company ; and it will not do to 
linger too long at the outset — telling of the world as it was in the 
first thirty of my eighty-odd years, and delaying my personal narra- 
tive. 

I take up the thread of my life's history. 



RECOLLECTIONS 
OF THE NEWSPAPER PRESS, 1823-1840. 

In this volume — as I have stated in my Preface — the frequent 
introduction of personal details is unavoidable. I trust that an 
apology offered thus early will be accepted as covering all the pages 
in which I write of myself. 

It chanced one evening in 1822 that I was a guest at a supper- 
party given by Eyre Evans Crowe (the author of " To-day in Ire- 
land " and other novels) at 16 Southampton Street, Strand.* There 
were present some remarkable men — among them John Banim, and 
Pigot, subsequently Lord Chief Baron of Ireland, then a student in 
the Temple. 

Ugo Foscolo. — Out of that evening came an introduction to 
Ugo Foscolo, and in the latter part of 1822 I engaged to act as a 
kind of literary secretary to the famous Italian poet. 

He was then living at South Bank, Regent's Park, the name of 
his residence being Digamma Cottage, so styled to commemorate an 
article he had contributed to the Quarterly Review on the Greek 
Digamma. He had built, decorated, and richly furnished it — on 
credit ; but of the two or three thousand pounds it had cost he could 
by no possibility have raised a hundred.f The natural consequence 
ensued : he was deprived of his cottage palace. That deprivation 
occurred after my connection with him had ceased. A small cottage 

* The rooms were, fifty years afterward, my chambers, in which I conducted 
The Art Journal : they were also the offices of Social Notes, and from the window 
I looked into the windows of Easty's Hotel, where for a year I sub-edited the John 
Bull newspaper. 

\ "When on my return from Spain," writes Count Pecchio, in August, 1823, 
" I went to visit him, I found him lodged in his new cottage, with all the luxury of 
a Fermier General, promenading over rooms covered with beautiful Flanders car- 
pets ; with furniture of the rarest woods, and statues in the hall ; with a hot-house 
full of exotics and costly flowers ; and still served by the three Graces (I believe 
more expensive than everything else)." 



58 UGO FOSCOLO. 

he had previously tenanted had been assigned to me for a residence.* 
I had little work to do, the all-sufficient reason being that Foscolo 
himself had none, none at least that was remunerative ; yet he lived 
grandly, and had the attendance of three female servants, all young 
and handsome. My recollection of him is vivid. He was somewhat 
under the middle size, thin, almost attenuated, but wiry, active, and 
exceedingly energetic, apparently unable to control a naturally irri- 
table temper by the influence of reason. His head was one of the 
finest, in the intellectual organs, I have ever seen : a forehead as 
broad and massive as that of Michael Angelo, whom indeed he some- 
what resembled, even to the slightly depressed nose ; his eyes were 
gray, deep-set, and quick ; shaggy eyebrows overhung them ; he wore 
a beard when beards were not common ; his mouth was large and 
sensual, and its bad expression was not concealed by a mustache ; 
his light hair was thin and long, it must have originally been red, 
and he was continually tearing it when under the effects of any sud- 
den excitement. 

Count Pecchio pictures him at an earlier period : " He was of 
middling stature, of rather strong and muscular make ; he had thick, 
rough, reddish curling hair, which rendered more energetic his poetic 
estro, and more horrible his tristful silence and his flashes of rage ; 
his eyes were gray, small, deep-sunk, quick, and sparkling." 

He was eagerly received into the society of English Liberals." 
With some of them he had made acquaintance in Italy ; others re- 
garded him as a martyr in the cause of Freedom. Perhaps he was 
so — heralding the changes that loomed in the not far-off distance. 
Assuredly he was the foe of both civil and ecclesiastical tyranny. 
He dared the first Napoleon when the Emperor's word was fate. It 
was a favorite " performance " of his to show an audience in what 
attitude and with what words he did so. For some time he was a 
frequent guest at Holland House, but the English aristocracy wearied 
of the excitable politician and erratic poet. 

His manuscripts were partly in English, partly in French, and 
partly in Italian. His calligraphy was of the worst possible order, 
and it was no easy task to bring his sentences together so as to make 
them readable by the printer and available for the publisher. 

In 1823, by the advice of Lady Dacre, he undertook to give a 
course of lectures on Italian literature. By her exertions, those of 
William Stewart Rose, and other distinguished literary friends, a 
numerous and cultivated audience assembled, and a thousand pounds 
were put into the pockets of Foscolo. 

Our evenings were generally spent in playing chess. I soon 

* Long before he came to England — a refugee — when his purse was as low as it 
was when I knew him — " he ordered clothes, bought horses, and lodged in a gilded 
apartment." So Count Pecchio writes of him. But he was a gambler then ; occa- 
sionally counting gold in heaps, and being as often without a coin. He never 
gambled while I knew him. 



UGO FOSCOLO. 



59 



found it was for me a dangerous game. If beaten, he would throw 
the men about, and often tear his long, straggling hair, so as to leave 
some of it in his hands ; and I was glad to retire to my lonely home, 
occasionally to be sent for and asked to accept an apology, which, 
of course, I always did. Foscolo made no secret of being an infidel. 
He had no principle to guide him that might have worked in the 
stead of religious sentiment. He died on the ioth'of December, 
1827, at Hammersmith, and was buried in the churchyard at Chis- 
wick. In 1 87 1 the body was exhumed and conveyed to Italy. I 
extract the following from a newspaper of that period : 

" It had been felt for some time past by the Italian Government that the 
remains of Ugo Foscolo ought no longer to lie in a foreign country, and that 
the Pantheon of Italy, La Santa Croce at Florence — where lie the ashes of 
Galileo, Alfieri, Politian, and others of noble name, and where a statue of 
Dante has been erected — should be still further honored by receiving the 
body of the Venetian exile. Signor A. Bargoni was commissioned to make a 
journey to England, and, if possible, to discover the place of Ugo Foscolo 's 
burial. His task was by no means an easy one ; for, though a monument had 
been erected by the Gurney family in honor of the great Italian, there was 
nothing to show that it had been placed over the spot where he had been in- 
terred. By the kind assistance of the rector of Chiswick, however, at last an 
old man was discovered who had assisted at the burial when a lad, and who 
stated that the spot was the same as that marked out by the memorial 
erected. The inner shell was opened and found to be filled up with sawdust, 
which, having been carefully brushed away, disclosed the body of Ugo Fos- 
colo. For, strange to say, whether owing to the peculiar nature of the soil, 
or some preserving mixture having been poured on the sawdust, the form was 
intact, and the features still perfect." 

Borne solemnly back to Italy, the remains of Foscolo were, on 
the 24th of June, 1871, laid, with great pomp, in the mighty cathe- 
dral of Santa Croce, between the tomb of Alfieri and the monument 
of Dante. " The crowds along the streets," said the chronicler of 
this interment, " were very great, and the streets themselves were 
most triumphantly adorned." So, after lying forty years in a for- 
eign grave, were conveyed to the Florence he had dearly loved the 
" wearied bones " of him who at least deserved to be honored as a 
foremost poet, and one of the chief patriots of the Italy of his time. 

" I shall endeavor to return to peace at Florence, 
And leave my wearied bones on the wooded height of Bellosguardo." 

So wrote Foscolo as far back as the year 1806. And the season that 
witnessed their return was that in which Italy — in the days of Fos- 
colo convulsed with internal dissensions and prostrate at the feet of 
Napoleon — had become united and free. 

In the year 1882 I pause, for a moment, to make record of my 
thankfulness to God who, in 1822, preserved me from my first great 
peril — to mind, heart, and soul. I do not refer to escape from the 



60 SIR ROBERT WILSON. 

sirens, though that is cause for gratitude, but to the Mercy that 
saved me from the taint of infidelity to which I was, then and there, 
more than merely exposed. I do not mean that Foscolo strove to 
corrupt me ; but he assuredly placed me in the way of strong temp- 
tations. The wiles of his " Graces " failed because just then I made 
the acquaintance of her who not long afterward became my wife. 
I was, therefore, in no danger from that ever-potent source of dan- 
ger to youth ; but Foscolo believed in no " first cause " — not only in 
no Redeemer, but in no Creator, and might have sapped the founda- 
tion and destroyed the structure that Christian parents had labored 
to raise. I remember his pointing to a lamp on the table, and then 
to the floor, saying, " There are insects crawling there ; and what 
that light is to them your God is to you." Through this trial I 
passed — I hope, unscathed — but even now I shudder to. think of the 
precipice from which the Hand of Mercy drew me back. I rejoice 
at the opportunity thus afforded me, almost at the outset of this 
book, to say this — Time has more and more strengthened in me the 
conviction that the only sure way of obtaining happiness is by 
nourishing, sustaining, and giving power to faith in a superintend- 
ing, controlling, and directing Providence. 

Sir Robert Wilson. — While I was in a state of almost hope- 
less despondency — seeing in the future only dark clouds, and in the 
present the inducements that tempt to a crime against which the 
Eternal has fixed his " Canon " — Count Porro, the friend of Foscolo, 
one eventful morning called to see me. His object was to employ 
me in copying a manuscript : one neither easy to read nor transcribe. 
He let me know it was a document confided to my honor, for it was 
a paper upon the issue of which much depended. I copied it and 
heard no more of the matter for a month. At the end of that time 
he drove up to my door and requested me to accompany him, not 
saying where or to whom. On the way, however, he explained that 
he was bringing me to the person for whom the manuscript had been 
copied. We stopped at a house in Regent Street, some eight or ten 
doors down, on the left, from Piccadilly, and were received by a tall, 
thin, wiry gentleman, obviously a soldier, with the unmistakable ex- 
terior that denoted a man habituated to command. Count Porro 
made him known to me as Sir Robert Wilson. I flushed with 
natural pride, for the romantic story of Lavalette was then fresh, 
and it was gratifying to see and know the hero of that memorable 
escape. After a few brief words I was set to work, and for eight 
days I was, pen in hand, in the service of that remarkable man. I 
suppose I discharged my duties satisfactorily, for at the end of that 
time he proposed to me to accompany him, or rather to follow him, 
to Spain, as an officer in the Anglo-Spanish Legion he was about to 
raise, and to act, when there, as one of his secretaries — appointments 
I gladly accepted ; " the world was all before me," and I had then 



THE ANGLO-SPANISH LEGION. 6 1 

no tie to bind me to anywhere or any one. I rejoiced to enlist under 
any banner. 

Early in 1823 France invaded Spain. England adopted the 
principle of neutrality ; but, as the Opposition peers and Commoners 
contended, "it was not for war, yet it was not for peace." In this 
country there was a strong feeling of sympathy with the revolt in 
the Peninsula. Lord Althorp failed in an attempt to repeal the Act 
which prohibited British subjects from engaging in foreign military 
service. In the House of Commons, Sir Francis Burdett gave it as 
his strong opinion that the French invasion of Spain " was a vile and 
detestable project." This widespread sympathy led to an attempt 
to embody a foreign legion for the service of Spain, or rather of the 
" rebellious " Cortes, who were, rightly or wrongly, supposed to be 
the advocates of freedom. The legion was to be under the command 
of Sir Robert Wilson, and the papers I had copied related to the 
expedition. He had, it was well known, visited Spain in secret. 

A committee to aid the Cortes had been formed in London, and 
of that committee I was (by Sir Robert's express desire) appointed 
secretary. During his absence, a great public meeting, to express 
sympathy and tender assistance, was held at the London Tavern. I 
did not hear the speeches, for it was my duty to sit in an outer room 
and receive subscriptions. The sum subscribed I took to the bank 
when the meeting terminated,* and next day was sitting as secretary 
at the Crown and Anchor. A few months afterward the affair was 
brought to a doleful, if not an ignominious, close, and I was again 
free and " on the stream." The honor expectant which Sir Robert 
meant to confer upon me — a lieutenancy in the Anglo-Spanish 
Legion — it is needless to say, I never enjoyed ; the surplus money 
was, if I remember rightly, handed to the Greeks, then in insurrec- 
tion ; the Cortes were beaten down, despotism for a while triumphed, 
and Sir Robert Wilson returned to his own country without having 
advanced liberty in Spain. 

It is not wonderful if my enthusiastic admiration for Sir Robert 
Wilson was great. The period was not far off when he had been the 
chivalric defender of Queen Caroline. That is a dark blot on the 
page of English history, but it is unnecessary to make here more 
than passing allusion to it. Sir Robert, for his " conduct " at the 
Queen's funeral, had been dismissed from the army : " His Majesty 
had no further occasion for his services." He vainly entreated and 

* On referring to the newspapers of the time, I find the following account of 
it : " Public Cause of Spanish Independence. — A meeting was held at the London 
Tavern on June 13, 1823. Among the noblemen present were Earl Grosvenor, 
Earl Gosford, Lord Erskine, Lord Lynedoch, Lord Ebrington, M. P., Lord Will- 
iam Bentinck, M. P., Lord John Russell, M. P., Lord William Russell, M. P., 
Lord Nugent, M. P., Hon. J. Abercromby, M. P., H. Brougham, M. P., John C. 
Hobhouse, M. P., Joseph Hume, M. P., and many others. Lord W. Bentinck 
took the chair." Not one of these men of mark is living in 1883. 



62 LA V ALETTE. 

demanded a court-martial. A public subscription was made, chiefly 
by his constituents (he represented the borough of Southwark), to 
recompense him for the loss of his commission, while his popularity 
was augmented a thousandfold. Of his defense in the House, in 
1822, Brougham said, " The judgment of it was perfect ; it could not 
have been materially improved in point of language by any man in 
the House or at the Bar." Long afterward he received justice from 
a King and a Government : his honors were restored to him, and at 
the time of his death he was Governor of Gibraltar. 

Lavalette. — In youth as in manhood, Wilson was brave and 
energetic, generous and sympathetic : guided by a natural compre- 
hension of right, and a matured and educated love of mercy. My 
enthusiasm was naturally excited by the part he had taken in sav- 
ing the life of the French officer, Lavalette ; the glory of which 
he shared with a Scotchman named Bruce and an Irishman named 
Hutchinson (afterward Lord Donoughmore). The Comte de Lava- 
lette had been condemned to death — and would assuredly have 
suffered death — for the part he had taken in the escape of the first 
Napoleon from Elba. Some record of this chivalrous venture — little 
known to the existing generation — will not be considered out of 
place. 

The escape from prison took place on the 20th December, 1815, , 
while the allied armies occupied Paris. For several days in ill 
health, and broken down by grief — or at all events apparently so — 
Madame Lavalette had been conveyed to the prison in a Sedan chair ; 
on that day she was passed in as usual, accompanied by her little 
daughter. She remained an hour in her husband's cell, and was 
heard to sob ; at length she was summoned to retire. It was the 
last interview, for he was to be shot next day. Leaning on the arm 
of one of the warders, stooping, almost crawling, sobbing, a large 
black veil concealing the face, there entered the chair — not madame 
but the doomed soldier. The officials at the several gates, utterly 
unsuspicious, allowed the chair to pass. Its inmate was conveyed to 
a carriage in waiting, and was very soon hidden in some house, where 
he continued in safety undiscovered. 

Madame was found enveloped in her husband's cloak, and smiled 
when she said " il est parti." The result may be better imagined 
than described. The change of dress had been so rapid and so com- 
plete, that when the father, holding a handkerchief to his face, and 
leading his little child by the hand, passed out, it was sympathy and 
not distrust that had been excited. 

But though freed from prison, it was by no means easy to escape 
from France ; for all possible effort was made at recapture : strict 
watch was placed at every barrier ; neither man nor woman could pass 
without minute scrutiny. Then there came to the rescue three British 
gentlemen, Mr. Bruce, Sir Robert Wilson, and Colonel Hutchinson. 



THE "BRITISH PRESS." 



63 



Sir Robert was a general officer who had obtained renown, and had 
written several military books ; the regiment of Colonel Hutchinson 
was quartered in the French capital, but the leading arrangements 
seem to have been made by Mr. Bruce. Neither of the three had 
any previous acquaintance with Lavalette. They were guided, as 
Wilson said to the French jury who tried him, by " the eternal laws 
of morality and humanity." The dress of an English officer was 
easily obtained ; passports were without difficulty procured ; and as a 
British officer he passed the barriers in the company of two British 
officers, one of whom wore the uniform of a general ; and on the 
9th of January, 1815, they quitted Paris : next day Lavalette was in 
sanctuary in England. 

For this offense the three were tried ; a verdict of guilty was found 
against them, and the three were sentenced each to three months' 
imprisonment. Madame for her " crime " was not prosecuted. 

The two soldiers were subjected to a severe reprimand "by the 
Prince Regent's command," who expressed his high displeasure. But 
his Royal Highness was unwilling to visit these officers with the full 
weight of that displeasure : they had already been punished in the 
country where the offense was committed. Probably the Prince was 
as well pleased with the issue as were the whole British people. It 
is certain that the gallant three received the homage of all the world. 
No doubt Sir Robert Wilson's share in the adventure led to his be- 
ing returned to Parliament as member for Southwark. 

Sir Robert appeared at the Bar in Paris in full uniform as a gen- 
eral officer, decorated with eight orders of several European states, 
one of which was the cordon of the Russian order of St. Anne — 
"hieroglyphics of honor" as the advocate, M. Dupin, called them. 
Madame Lavalette was in court during the trial ; and the three ac- 
cused saluted her with low bows. Being asked if she had seen and 
known them previously, she looked at them, and declared she had 
never known, and, until then, had never seen either of them. 

The " British Press." — During my employment as secretary to 
the Spanish Committee I had on many occasions written articles con- 
cerning the struggles in Spain for a daily newspaper, the British 
Press. When the Spanish Committee closed I was retained upon 
that paper as one of its corps of Parliamentary reporters. I more- 
over wrote reviews, criticisms on art, and so forth. The editor was 
an Irishman named Mahon — a man of ill character, who had been 
an attorney in Cork. He was a very tall man, and went by the so- 
briquet of " the long orator." He owed his appointment as editor 
to a speech he had made at a public meeting to give relief to Ireland 
during one of its periodical famines, and was in no way fitted for the 
post thus accidentally thrust upon him. The general manager was 
another Irishman, a Mr. Lane, who had much experience with little 
ability. The paper had been set up by the London publishers, who 



64 REPORTERS. 

were offended by certain articles in the Morning Post. It did not 
arrive at "length of days," being in due course merged with the 
New Times, which not long afterward became the Morning Journal j 
of this last paper I shall assuredly have something to say presently. 

The sub-editor of the British Press at the time of my engage- 
ment was George Medd Butt, a special pleader, afterward Q. C. 
Had he lived he would have been on the bench ; for, though not a 
good speaker, he was a man of talent, with an enormous appetite for 
work : all night at his desk in the newspaper office, and all day busy 
at his chambers in the Temple ! He died early. He was my friend. 
I esteemed him highly as a truly upright man, and a sound and able 
lawyer.* He was my " best man " at my wedding. 

My connection with the British Press need not detain me long. 
I may state, en passant, that one of its parliamentary corps was the 
elder Dickens, a gentleman of no great intellectual capacity. Now 
and then there came to the office a smart, intelligent, active lad, who 
brought what was then called, and is still, I believe, named, " penny- 
a-line stuff " — that is to say, notices of accidents, fires, police reports, 
such as escaped the more regular reporters, for which a penny a 
printed line was paid. 

The lad to whom I refer was that Charles Dickens whose name 
not very long afterward became known to, and honored by, the half 
of human kind. 

Parliamentary Reporting. — There were among the reporters 
of that time several gentlemen who were afterward eminent. Such 
were Payne Collier and the present Vice-Chancellor Bacon. Other 
men of mark connected with the Press, though not as parliamentary 
reporters, were Campbell (Lord Campbell), Judge Talfourd, Samuel 
Taylor Coleridge (who had left the field when I entered it), Leigh 
Hunt, William Hazlitt, and Allan Cunningham. Reporting is a 
calling of my connection with which I have always been proud. It 
infers a large amount of resolute labor, physical endurance, a ready 
aptitude, an early and sound education, familiar acquaintance with 
public events, a retentive memory, and extensive reading. There is 
but little responsibility, and the work is liberally paid for. It is by 
no means easy for men of letters, before they become conspicuous, 
to get so much for so little labor in other fields. Although in 
"changes wrought by Time" I have treated this subject, there are 
additional notes that will not weary my readers. The parliamentary 
reporters of to-day live in an auspicious age : they are not only tol- 
erated, but petted ; comforts as well as conveniences are made for 

* So certain did his rise seem to me, that once, in a mood half jocular and half 
serious, I handed him a pound, and received from him an agreement to give me a 
pipe of port wine when he became a judge. As I have intimated, he did not live 
to pay me ; but he would have done so had his life been prolonged. 



REPORTERS. 



65 



them. In the old House of Commons, the conditions of parliament- 
ary reporting were as follows : The reporter pushed his way with 
the crowd to the Strangers' Gallery. The seat provided for him and 
the other representatives of the Press was the back seat of that gal- 
lery, into which he had to squeeze himself through a doorway about 
two feet wide. Seated there, he took his notes. There were, per- 
haps, a hundred seats under him, benches filled by " strangers," and 
in this back bench it was very difficult to hear. When he sought 
egress he had a hard fight with intervening legs and arms to reach 
his own door ; often jaded, heated, and laden with anxiety, he had 
absolutely to push his way in or out — struggling to make room for 
his successor who was pushing his way in. Having had his " hour," 
and been relieved, he made his way as fast as he could to the office 
to write out his notes for the printer.* Shorthand was by no means 
universal ; some of the best reporters did not use it — or, rather, they 
had a shorthand of their own, abridging words and sentences ; 
memory enabling them to " fill in," and deriving essential aid from 
a knowledge and comprehension of the subject discussed. It is 
needless to say that the printed speeches were frequently far better 
than the speeches spoken.f This is no doubt as true of reporting 
to-day as it was of reporting yesterday. The fact has been many 
times illustrated. " Let them alone," said Pelham ; " they make 
better speeches for us than we do for ourselves." O'Connell, in the 
zenith of his power, shrank with terror from a threat of the reporters 
that they would not report a line of what he said in the House until 
he withdrew a charge he had unjustly made against them. Still they 
were only tolerated ; even now when any member chooses to address 
to the Speaker the words, " Sir, I perceive there are strangers in the 
House," the Speaker will of necessity make answer, " Strangers must 
withdraw." % 

* A common toast of reporters at social meetings was, "Joseph Hume getting 
up, and George Canning sitting down." The meaning was this : the reporter who 
had to report the one so abridged his task that a quarter of an hour's subsequent 
work was all that was required of him, while to have an hour of Canning implied 
three or four hours' toil at the office. 

f When not a word was to be lost, as in the case of George Canning or Henry 
Brougham, the shorthand reporter had the advantage ; when condensation was 
essential, and much had to be omitted, the advantage lay with the note-taker, who, 
as I have said, had a shorthand of his own. I know I have often filled a quarter 
of a column of type from a single page of notes — of course recalling to memory 
what was said, sometimes, no doubt, what ought to have been said ; and I have 
been more than once thanked by an honorable member for judicious abridgment 
and graceful manipulation of a speech. 

% In 1738 the House resolved unanimously, " that it is a high indignity to, and 
a notorious breach of privilege in this House, for any news-writer ... to presume 
to insert," etc. ; " and that this House will proceed with the utmost severity against 
such offenders." The principle is continued to this day : an event in illustration 
occurred not long ago. To suppress parliamentary reporting and issue newspapers 
without debates in the Houses (but that is an impossibility), would be to light a 
beacon of civil war. 



66 LORD ELDON. 

The power of reporters was, and is, incalculably great ; yet I 
never heard a charge of corrupt practice brought against any one of 
them. There was never even a suspicion of bribery, and to their 
independence as well as integrity testimony has always been borne. 
Sir Robert Peel publicly stated that " during the time he held office 
he had never received any solicitation for any favor or patronage 
from a reporter " ; and I believe that every minister from long before 
him to the present day would say the same. They had their favor- 
ites, and their dislikes, no doubt ; and probably the lengths at which 
speeches were given were in a measure guided by the politics of the 
paper-representative ; but unfair reports arising from such sources 
were rarely or never urged against a reporter.* 

My essai de bataille was the House of Lords. Reporters there 
were not so cruelly " provided for " as in the House of Commons ; 
they stood, however, among the crowd that fronted the bar, and it 
was a serious breach of privilege to be seen taking notes. Fre- 
quently, from one of the subordinate guardians compelled to notice 
the offender, would be heard the mandate, " Sir, put by your book." 
It was, of course, done for a few seconds, and the note-taking re- 
sumed. I may record one remarkable " breach of privilege." The 
venerable Lord Eldon had left the woolsack to receive a bill which 
the Commons had brought to the bar, and in drawing hastily back to 
make way, I dropped my note-book over the bar. I must have 
looked terribly frightened as I made a dart under and seized it. 
The old lord, seeing my alarm, bowed and said, " Sir, I would have 
handed you your book." I made some kind of reply which amounted 
to "Thank you, my lord." The much-abused Chancellor planted 
some seeds by those words ; for, although most public writers then 
looked upon him as game to be freely and perpetually " run down," 
I never wrote a line, or permitted any one I could influence to write 
aught that could have given him even a momentary annoyance. 

I recall the first evening of my trial as a parliamentary reporter. 
When I began to take notes I was so utterly confused that I could 
not catch a sentence. I closed my book, and was leaving the House, 
abandoning the " calling," as, for me, hopeless, when, as I reached 
the door, my ear did seize upon a few words. I returned more self- 
possessed ; coolly listened, put down what I heard, and made a fair 
report as the result of my first effort. 

There were then, as there have always been, unscrupulous men 
who directed some portions of the newspaper press. At the time of 
which I write, two journalists were especially unprincipled and no- 

* I think that the year 1870 supplied the last instance of members complaining 
of unfair reporting. It was alleged that " speeches of importance were suppressed ; 
that some were printed in a mutilated form ; as, indeed, publishing iniquitous re- 
ports, and so being an intolerable grievance.'* 



THE "AGE." 



6 7 



torious — Westmacott, who edited the Age, and Gregory, who edited 
the Satirist; perhaps I ought to say three, for Theodore Hook, 
editor of the John Bull, although a man of higher attainments, was 
not much superior in morals to either of his worthless compeers. 
Yet, bad as they were, they were not so bad as some editors who 
had preceded them in exerting evil influence by precept and exam- 
ple. One of the most venal of them all was the Rev. Henry Bate, 
editor of the Morning Post, and afterward of the Morning Herald, 
who did his worst to degrade letters and disgrace his vocation. His 
time was spent in the green-rooms of theatres, where he was a blight, 
and in taverns, where he was a pest. Although an ordained clergy- 
man, he fought several duels. Notwithstanding his infamous charac- 
ter, he obtained, by the influence of the Prince of Wales, to whose 
evil habits he had pandered, a lucrative church living, and subse- 
quently a baronetcy. I did not know him — he was before my time, 
and happily I did not know much of his successors — two of them, 
that is to say, for with Hook I was well acquainted. 

The Age commenced its career in 1828, but it was not until some 
time afterward that it came into the hands of Westmacott. The 
Satirist was its junior by some years. They were incubi on the 
Press of the day, but they prospered, and their proprietors flourished 
by means of scandal. The papers were of opposite politics, the Sat- 
irist being " Liberal," the Age " Tory." To slander man or woman 
of the opposite side was a delight, and seemed to be accepted as a 
duty ; private character was the mark chiefly assailed, and there was 
usually a grain of truth in a bushel of calumny. Westmacott and 
Gregory were both called away long since, to answer for their deeds 
on earth, and their journals are remembered by the present genera- 
tion chiefly because Macaulay in one of his essays stigmatizes an es- 
pecially disgraceful proposal as too bad " for the editor of the Satirist 
to have made to the editor of the Age." No charge was too gross 
when there was the shadow of foundation for it. In general, there 
was so much of the one to season the other as to prevent the victim 
from appealing to a court of justice ; and often, though not always, 
a fear of the notoriety that was to follow prevented persons assailed 
from taking the law into their own hands. The law did, however, 
occasionally step in to punish, and heavy damages were several times 
awarded ; yet, somehow, infamy was so profitable that means were 
forthcoming to defray costs. But the largest incomes derived by 
those papers were from the sale of silence. Distinguished persons, 
not excepting those of royal birth, who were liable to attack, and 
knew they were so, were informed that certain letters and documents 
were in the editor's hands — for publication. These had been pur- 
chased from needy scoundrels for small sums, and were sold at enor- 
mous profit to the parties they would have compromised. Discover- 
ies and exposures were made, now and then, by malcontents, who, 



68 WILLIAM MAGINN. 

having originally got hold of the things, were disappointed with their 
shares, thinking they had an " honest " right to a fair proportion of 
the gains. Often the information thus tendered for sale amounted 
to little or nothing, but the parties threatened were ignorant of that. 
The " conscience that doth make cowards " magnified possibilities 
into probabilities, and it was rarely the editors failed to make good 
bargains with the "accused."* 

One of the principal props of the Age was, for some years, Will- 
iam Maginn, LL. D., a literary Swiss who readily sold himself to any 
buyer, or to two buyers at the same time — one being Tory, the other 
Whig. I knew Maginn in Cork so far back as 1820. In that city at 
that time there were two societies, each styling itself " literary and 
philosophic." The one, in which I was a raw recruit, was assailed 
in Blackwood 's Magazine, and in the Gazette, surnamed the " Liter- 
ary " — then in the early years of its long life — by Maginn and a 
clever surgeon named Gosnell. The attacked were ready and will- 
ing to reply, and a paper war was the result. It did not convulse 
Ireland : but I for one was not sorry to leave Cork, which I did in 
the beginning of the year 182 1. I had made myself friends on the 
one hand and enemies on the other by a jeu d' esprit, a dramatic 
poem, entitled " The Talents." It contained many hard hits in pay- 
ment of hard hits, and was very acceptable to the Society, which, 
until then, had had the worst of it.f 

Maginn came to London in 1823-24, with as large a "stock-in- 
trade " of knowledge as was ever brought by one man from Ireland 
to England ; yet it was profitless and almost fruitless. His profound 
learning, extensive reading, his familiarity with ancient and modern 
languages, his ready and brilliant wit, were utterly ineffectual in 
achieving for him independence or fame. He lived a life of mean 
and degrading " shifts," and died in absolute poverty in 1842. He 
is buried at Walton-on-Thames, where in i860 I tried in vain to find 
his grave. The sexton was unable to point out the precise spot, and 
probably it will never be known. I did my best to get up a sub- 
scription to place some mark in the church or on the church wall, 
but there was no response to my appeal. J 

* I have heard it said, and believe it to be true, that in Westmacott's editorial 
room he had a small basket suspended near the ceiling, that a spring, when touched, 
brought close to his hand. It contained a pistol. Westmacott was a poor creature 
physically, and had received several thrashings. Gregory was, on the contrary, a 
very powerful man, and aided by a huge loaded bludgeon, which he always carried, 
would not easily have met his match. 

f Of the thirty or forty persons named in that brochtire, either to praise or blame, 
I am the only one now living. A few years ago, I gave a copy of this poetical 
folly, which bears the date 1820, to the Cork library, and with it some observations 
on its origin, and some account of the persons assailed or defended. 

% I found among some old papers the bill of the undertaker, William Drewitt. 
It records that "he died at Walton, on the 20th day of August, 1842, aged forty- 



WILLIAM MAGINN. 69 

His mind was frittered away on periodical writing. For Eraser's 
Magazine he wrote monthly, for the Age weekly, for any publication 
indeed that would give him the pay of the moment. He had an 
awkward impediment of speech, not quite a stutter ; and soon after 
he achieved repute, his countenance, never very expressive and cer- 
tainly not handsome, assumed the terrible character that self-indul- 
gence never fails to give. He is an example of the men who could 
fight for the shadow, while utterly ignoring the substance, of honor, 
and is one of the shames as well as one of the glories of Literature. 

No doubt the fertile source of his misery was drink. He was al- 
ways drunk when he could obtain the means of intoxication ; conse- 
quently he seldom put pen to paper in a condition of entire sobriety, 
and sometimes did not know what he wrote. Indecencies as well as 
absurdities occasionally crept into papers upon which he was em- 
ployed. He did not, like Sheridan, " get drunk like a gentleman " ; 
he got drunk like a tap-house sot. Any liquor that came in his way 
served his turn. To him is attributed the receipt for making whisky 
punch — " first put in the sugar, then put in the lemon, and then put 
in the whisky, and every drop of water you put in after that spoils 
the punch." Of him also a story is told that when a friend was 
praising his wine as remarkably good, and asked him where he got 
it, he replied, "I get it at the London Tavern." "Well," was the 
answer, ' a very good place surely, but somewhat dear ; what do you 
pay for it ? " " I'm sure I don't know," was the reply ; " I believe 
they do put something down in a book." 

His friend Kennedy told me this story of him : A gentleman 
with whom Kennedy was acquainted projected a newspaper of high 
class, and coveted the services of Maginn. The two friends were 
invited to dine with him and arrange preliminaries, and Kennedy 
was resolved that Maginn should go to the meeting sober. With that 
view he called upon him before he was up in the morning, and never 
left him all day, resisting every appeal for a dram. As the dinner- 
time drew near they walked together to the house of the newspaper 
projector, Maginn making several efforts to rush into the public- 
houses they passed en route. At length the Doctor stopped before 
the shop of an undertaker, and said, "By-the-way, I remember I 
have an inquiry to make here ; wait for me two minutes." There 
could be no possible danger in that quarter, and Kennedy waited 
patiently outside. The two minutes grew to half an hour, and out 
staggered the Doctor — drunk. He had achieved his aim by the fol- 
lowing device : On entering the shop, his handkerchief was .before 
his face, and he was apparently sobbing in an agony of grief, all he 
could gasp forth being, " Let there be no expense spared ; she was 

eight years." The funeral expenses — seeing that the church was but a few yards 
distant from the public-house at Walton, where he died — must have been inexplica- 
bly costly — the charge being £35 4J. yd. 



j THE " JOHN BULL." 

worthy, and I can afford it." The undertaker applied the usual 
terms of consolation, and made notes concerning hearse, carriages, 
banners, etc., but, seeing his client in so sad a state of distress, rec- 
ommended a little brandy. After a " No " and a " Well, a little," a 
bottle was produced, and, between question and answer, glass after 
glass disappeared, until the whole was consumed. Maginn was about 
to withdraw, when the undertaker, proud of his unlimited commis- 
sion, in gentle accents said, " Sir, you have not yet told me where she 
is to be taken to." " Taken to ! " was Maginn's answer ; " you may 

take her to ! " He had staggered out of the shop and rejoined 

his friend before the undertaker could recover from the shock. It is 
needless to add that although Kennedy led Maginn to the meeting, 
nothing came of it, except an invincible repugnance on the part of 
the projector to place any trust in such a man. 

Maginn's duel with Grantley Berkeley is well known. Berkeley, 
exasperated by an attack on the memory of his mother in Frasers 
Magazine, had beaten the comparatively innocent publisher within 
an inch of his life. Maginn avowed the authorship, and of course 
they fought. Five shots each were fired ; one of Berkeley's balls struck 
the boot of Maginn, and a ball from the pistol of Maginn ruffled the 
coat-collar of Berkeley. Maginn's second, Fraser (no relation of the 
publisher, but usually accredited with the editorship of the magazine), 
said, " Maginn, will you have another shot ? " " Blaze away ! " was 
the answer. " Be J , a barrel o' powder, by G ! " 

In 1842, in the month of September, an appeal was made on be- 
half of his family : it was signed by Giffard, Lockhart, the Bishop of 
Cork (his native city), Professor Wilson, and the Provost of Trinity 
College. A sum of ^500 was raised, of which the Queen Dowager, 
the King of Hanover, and Sir Robert Peel each subscribed ^100 : 
three out of the five. 

His was a wasted life : with immense capabilities there were small 
results. The world owes him little — nothing, indeed, when the fer- 
tility of the source is taken into account. Such evil is the conse- 
quence — almost always the inevitable consequence — of habits that 
sap the mind, paralyze power, and make dishonesty and vice triumph 
easily over rectitude and virtue. The name of Dr. Maginn is but a 
sound to this generation. 

Although I have classed the John Bull with the Age and the Sat- 
irist (and as an instrument of calumny it was hardly less infamous 
than either), it is right that a distinction should be made. An oppo- 
nent in politics was a natural enemy, but I do not believe that Hook 
was urged to his assaults by personal malice or by thought of iniqui- 
tous gain. The John Bull (which began its career in December, 
1820) was devised and established with the avowed purpose of per- 
secuting the unfortunate Queen Caroline, and for the annoyance and 
injury of her friends. In the preface to the first number, the Queen 



THEODORE HOOK AND SIR ROBERT WILSON. 71 

was spoken of as " that sickening woman." The manner in which 
she was treated was atrocious, there being no grain of mercy for her, 
nor for any person, gentle or simple, who supported her cause. One 
of her "ladies of honor," Lady Jersey, who had been unmercifully 
assailed in its columns, greatly promoted its popularity, not only 
by prosecuting it for libel, but by publicly announcing that she 
would not only exclude from her own parties, but would use 
her influence to exclude from the parties of her friends, "any 
person who took in that pestilent paper the John Bull" Various 
circumstances aided its circulation from the commencement. The 
projectors calculated on a weekly sale of 750, and had prepared ac- 
cordingly, but in six weeks the circulation had risen to 10,000. Its 
force was in its terse, bitter, and bitingly sarcastic epigrams ; and in 
the verses — having in all cases political poignancy — which Hook 
threw off with a rapidity absolutely astonishing. Some of them were 
indecent as well as ruthless ; in fact, any weapon that was likely to 
"floor" an adversary was freely used, with no compunction, and 
without a dread of probable or possible consequences. These con- 
sequences were often severe ; large damages for libels being the 
principal punishments. Personal chastisement was seldom awarded, 
for Hook pertinaciously and systematically denied all intercourse 
with or influence over the paper. 

In the year 1836, when Theodore Hook succeeded me as editor 
of the New Monthly Magazine, he offered me, and I accepted, the 
sub-editorship of the John Bull. During such sub-editorship no 
libel appeared in the paper, nor did aught that was in a strong sense 
objectionable. Certainly I was not in a position to refuse the inser- 
tion of anything sent to me by Mr. Hook, but one resource was 
always at hand — I should have retired from my post if what was sent 
had been offensive. But much of the sparkle, and almost all the 
wit, had gone out of the paper with its venom, and its circulation fell 
off considerably. Of its subsequent history I know nothing. 

It is said, and I believe with truth, that Sir Robert Wilson (who 
had been almost weekly assailed with venom) one day met Hook in 
the street, when a conversation to this effect took place : " Hook," 
said Sir Robert, " I am to be attacked next Sunday in the John Bull.'" 
" Are you ? " answered Hook, raising his eyes in astonishment ; 
"what a shame!" "It is true, however," said Sir Robert. "I do 
not complain of assaults that are made on public grounds, but this is 
entirely a private matter, and may touch me very nearly. Now mind 
what I say, Hook. I know you have nothing to do with the John 
Bull : you have told me so half a dozen times ; but if that article 
appears, as surely as you live, I'll horsewhip you wherever I find 
you ! " The article never did appear. 

I was glad to be rid of the connection. I had joined it with 
reluctance, continued it with some self-reproach, and release was a 
boon that made me happier. 



72 



THE " REP RESENT A TI VE." 



To the last Hook was never seen, acknowledged, or known at the 
office. I have understood that in those days of personal peril, when 
duels were not always to be avoided by persons who, from any mo- 
tive, would " speak out," a coarse, half-brutal, but tall and power- 
fully built Irishman, of the grade of a day-laborer, was kept on the 
premises to answer all applicants to see the editor, his one sentence 
generally being enough — I'm the Idditor, sir, at your sarvice." 

I have, I think, dwelt at sufficient length on these unpleasant 
reminiscences of the newspaper vampires that preyed on society in 
the days of George IV and William IV. From the John Bull I 
turn to another and very different literary enterprise, the career of 
which was as brief as unfortunate. 

In 1825 the Representative, a morning newspaper, was announced 
by Mr. John Murray, the renowned publisher of Albemarle Street ; 
I was appointed one of its corps of parliamentary reporters. Rarely 
had a publication been launched into the world of literature with 
such " great expectations." It was believed that the supply of money 
was inexhaustible ; and it was known that the best literary aid of 
the day was at the command of the proprietor. There had been 
time for ample preparation ; new type and fine paper were among 
the accessories ; and, in short, success seemed as certain as it ever 
could be in an undertaking of an always hazardous class. The day 
preceding the issue of the first number, Mr. Murray might have 
obtained a very large sum for a share of the copyright, of which he 
was the sole proprietor ; the day after that issue the copyright was 
worth comparatively nothing. To use a very common simile, the 
Representative " went up like a rocket and came down like the stick." 

All things needful or desirable had been secured except the most 
important — an editor. Editor there was literally none from the be- 
ginning to the end. The first number supplied conclusive evidence 
of the utter ignorance of editorial tact on the part of the person in- 
trusted with the duty. The leading article consisted, if I remember 
rightly, of seven columns, and was a review of the political state of 
Europe. Newspapers then were not as they are now — when a single 
copy of some of our leviathans might make the main sheet of a 
yacht. Advertisers were naturally eager to appear in this first num- 
ber : they and the leading article occupied more than half the paper. 
In the other half there was nothing new or interesting, nothing to 
sustain the general impression that the Represe?itative was to be a 
Power. In short, the work was badly done ; if not a snare it was a 
delusion ; and the reputation of the new journal fell below zero in 
twenty-four hours. 

To this day, the name of its original editor, or rather of the per- 
son who so conspicuously failed to act as such, remains a mystery. 
Mr. Murray, junior, I suppose knows, but I doubt if there be any 



THE "REPRESENTATIVE." 73 

one else who does. The "big" leading article had been written 
with great ability, but was utterly out of place. I thought, and still 
think, the writer was Lockhart. Mr. Grant, in one of his three large, 
but not great, volumes, affirms that the first editor was the younger 
D'Israeli, and, after speculating as to his probable salary, romances 
somewhat about the splendor of the editorial office, where it was 
expected Mr. D'Israeli "would receive Mr. Murray's aristocratic 
friends." There was some elegance but no " splendor " there ; while 
the reporters' office resembled a large barn rather than a room for 
thought or study. Both were in Northumberland Court, in the Strand, 
the one on the opposite side of the court from the other. That Mr. 
D'Israeli never was the editor, I am certain. I am very sure he 
never wrote a line for the paper. I certainly never saw him nor 
heard his name at the office. Moreover, we have Mr. D'Israeli — in 
a letter written and published by his friend and solicitor — declaring 
that " he never received any compensation for anything he had ever 
written for the Press." Grant is clearly in error ; but, as if one error 
was to be sustained by another, he says, " Some few years before 
the Representative was published, Mr. D'Israeli had a small periodical 
of his own, partly political and partly literary." Now, as Mr. D'Israeli 
was but twenty-one years old in 1825, it is hard to see how he could 
have been an editor some few years " before that date. Cyrus Red- 
ding committed the same palpable error ; and with sundry sneers at 
D'Israeli, describes him as the Editor of the Star Chamber. 

The only person visible to the reporters connected with the man- 
agement of the paper was a " retired " clergyman named Edwards, 
if I except Dr. Maginn, who contributed his share to ruin it — during 
the seven months of its existence.* 

Dr. Maginn was "nothing if not intoxicated," and he was worse 
than nothing then. I remember having to report one of the most 
remarkable events of that time — a masquerade ball for the benefit 
of the Spitalfields weavers. Various members of the royal family 
and the noblest ladies of the aristocracy were present. More than 
once I saw Maginn slouching about the floor of the Opera House 
(where the ball was held), clad in a dress by no means over-decent, 
and with unmistakable indications of his usual " habit." I wrote 
my report, and it was printed ; but what was my horror next morn- 
ing at reading a leading article describing the brilliant affair as an 

* A story was at that time told of Mr. Murray. Being one night bacchi plenas 
(then a very vernal offense), he was straying unconsciously about some London 
street, when he was luckily encountered by a gentleman who knew him. This 
friend in need called a hackney-coach, and told the driver to convey the great pub- 
lisher to his house in Whitehall Place. As the gentleman was bidding him good- 
night, Mr. Murray shouted to him. He advanced to the coach-door and asked if 
he could do anything more, adding, " Do you want anything ? " " Want — want ! " 
murmured the proprietor of the Representative j "want — want! Yes: I want an 
editor :" 



74 THE "MORNING JOURNAL:' 

assemblage of disreputable people of the lower class, whose antics 
were like those of buffoons — or words to that effect ! Small wonder 
that the Representative had a short life and not a merry one, and that 
Mr. Murray was a large monetary loser by the speculation ! * 

After the decease of the Representative I became one of the par- 
liamentary reporters of the New Times. The editor at that period 
was a thorough gentleman and a good man — Eugenius Roche, an 
Irishman of the best stamp. I had known him previously. Its pro- 
jector and editor, Dr. Stoddard, having received a government ap- 
pointment at Malta, the journal lingered and died — or, to speak more 
correctly, it merged into the Morning Journal, a new paper started 
to maintain Protestant ascendency, and to oppose the Catholic 
claims that were then, in 1828, making headway, threatening to 
" swamp the British Constitution " — as Lord Eldon not long after- 
ward declared, " so that the sun of England's prosperity would set 
for ever." 

O'Connell had been returned for Clare County, and Great Britain 
was in a state of terrible turmoil. " No Popery ! " was once again 
chalked on the dead walls of the Metropolis, and strong efforts were 
made to rouse the whole British population ; such efforts were fortu- 
nately made in vain. The good sense, practical wisdom, and en- 
lightened forethought of a large proportion of the middle and higher 
classes had brought about a memorial to Parliament ; and from the 
day on which the monster petition was presented to the House, 
" Catholic Emancipation " became a question not of years, but 
months. Such an unequivocal expression of English opinion was 
irresistible. The Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel yielded 
— reluctantly, it is true — and the memorable year 1829 saw the pass- 
ing of the Bill. 

The " Morning Journal." — The editor of the Morning Jour- 
nal 'was Mr. Robert Alexander. In December, 1829, he was prose- 
cuted by Government for libels on the Duke of Wellington and Sir 
Robert Peel. Inexcusable libels they certainly were, making all 
allowance for the heat and excitement of party ; for party feeling 
ran frightfully high. Alexander defended himself, and did it badly, 
for he was by no means a man of large capacity, and, if educated at 
all, was self-educated. 

The libels were certainly atrocious. Lord Lyndhurst was charged 
with selling to Sir Edward Sugden the office of Solicitor-General for 

* The firm of " John Murray " was a literary power in those days ; it is so now. 
Few men are more respected than is John Murray, junior ; and from the establish- 
ment in Albemarle Street many of the best books of the age continue to be issued. 
The elder John Murray died in 1843. He made friends of the many great authors 
for whom he published ; was always prompt and liberal in payment, often volun- 
tarily augmenting terms agreed upon, I believe on more than one occasion doub- 
ling them. 



TAXES ON KNOWLEDGE. 



n 



a loan of ^"30,000. The noble lord was not assailed by name ; and 
Alexander put in an affidavit in which he denied that the Lord 
Chancellor was the person aimed at ; but the denial had little other 
effect than to augment the offense. Even worse was the attack on 
the Duke of Wellington. It described his Grace as an ambitious, 
unprincipled, and designing minister, keeping his Majesty under de- 
grading and unconstitutional control ; it charged him with " despi- 
cable cant," with " gross treachery to his country, or else the most 
arrant cowardice, or treachery, cowardice, and artifice united." The 
jury found Alexander guilty ; and the proprietors also guilty ; but 
the latter had nominal sentences, while the former was condemned 
to a year's imprisonment in Newgate, and to a fine of ^300. 

During that imprisonment I edited the paper : appointed to 
the onerous post by a sort of Attorney-General, who managed the 
finances, but at the written request of Alexander. I received, how- 
ever, from the dignity nothing in money, and " less than nothing " in 
fame. It was expected that the anti-papal party would support the 
paper ; and beyond doubt many sums of money were sent with that 
view to the office, or to Alexander in jail. The object of Alexander 
was to make himself a martyr. Almost daily he sent me leaders that 
were libels more gross than those for which he had been prosecuted. 
I had neither the desire nor the intention to be made his scape-goat, 
and I steadily refused to insert them ; replying to his protests that I 
would leave my editorial desk at an hour's notice, but that so long 
as I was there no libel should appear in the paper. 

The party gave it no adequate support, and it died before Alex- 
ander was released from prison. The Duke of Cumberland, then 
residing at Kew, was expected to head a party for its support, and I 
believe he did subscribe largely for the defense. I had an interview 
with him. I remember him as singularly repulsive in countenance 
and manner ; utterly unlike the other members of his illustrious 
family : as unbearably haughty as they were agreeably courteous. I 
had not sought the interview, and I did not seek to repeat it. 

On his release from prison Alexander assumed the editorship of 
a county journal, the Liverpool Mail j and in the columns of that 
paper there appeared, many years afterward, a violent attack on Sir 
Robert Peel, alluding to the Morning Journal, but misrepresenting 
the history of its downfall in a very remarkable manner. For myself 
I became — shortly after terminating my connection with the Morning 
Journal — sub-editor of the New Monthly Magazine, then under the 
editorship of the poet, Thomas Campbell. 

I can not conclude this sketch of my early connection with the 
Press better than by glancing at the happily removed imposts that 
half a century ago made newspapers few in number and high in price. 
Every copy of the paper received a government stamp, of the nomi- 
nal value of fourpence, and for which a net sum of threepence half- 



y6 THE FATHER OF THE PRESS. 

penny was paid. No allowance was made for unsold copies. On 
every advertisement there was a duty imposed of three shillings and 
sixpence, without a farthing of deduction for bad debts. The cost 
of a newspaper was sevenpence ; of this the stamp-tax absorbed ex- 
actly one half, so that, deducting the cost of paper and printing, there 
remained little to defray the expenses of editing, literary aid, reporting, 
etc. Moreover, there was a very heavy duty on paper. A crusade 
was started against these "taxes on knowledge," and was headed by 
prominent Liberals of the day. I may instance, as a few of the lead- 
ers of the movement, Grote, Bowring, Roebuck, Hume, Warburton, 
Birkbeck, Molesworth, O'Connell, and, last but by no means least, 
Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer, who on the 15th of June, 1832, opened 
a debate on the subject in the House of Commons, and was there- 
fore prominent in the agitation that achieved its first great victory 
when the stamp-duty was lowered from fourpence to one penny, and 
the advertisement-tax from three shillings and sixpence to one shil- 
ling and sixpence. The partial concessions being found unsatisfac- 
tory, both duties were at length totally abolished ; and in 1861 the 
crushing impost upon paper also went the way of all the other bur- 
dens that, half a century back, lay so heavily on the British Press. 

Until a comparatively brief time ago I considered myself the 
" father " of the English newspaper press — that is to say, its oldest 
living member. I have ascertained, however, that it is not so, as the 
accompanying letter will show.* Yet it is sixty years since I began 
my work in the gallery, and had the honor to be associated with the 
venerable and distinguished man of letters who is, it appears, my 
senior by many years. 

It should be borne in mind that few become reporters with a view 
to permanence : it is almost always considered the stepping-stone to 
a loftier position, and, as I have shown, many have found it so. Of 
these was one of my earlier friends, Charles R. Dodd, long a reporter 
on the Times, an estimable gentleman, whom it was my good fortune 

* Riverside, Maidenhead, 

lltk September, 1S77. 
My dear Mr. Hall, or rather Old Friend : 

If you be the father, I am the grandfather, of the newspaper press. I was en- 
gaged on the Times as long ago as 1810, and I had written for it successfully even 
before that year. Before I was 23 years old I had satisfied the late Mr. John 
Walter so well, that he made me an extra present of .£50, and when I was 30 years 
old he presented me with another £100. He used afterward to visit me. 

I then transferred my services to the Mottling Chronicle, and continued upon 
that paper till the end of my newspaper career in 1850. I must now be 10 years at 
least older than you are ; for I am in my 89th year, but well and cheerful, thank 
God. Yours very sincerely, 

J. Payne Collier. 

Always busy on Our Old Poets and Poetry', which keeps me well and cheerful. 
I began with these and shall end with them. 



NEWSPAPERS OF TO-DAY. 



77 



to bring to London from Cork, where he was a solicitor. He has 
left a name recognized with gratitude by the public as that of the 
originator of the " Parliamentary Guide," which he conceived, edited, 
and continued annually to publish, as long as he lived. It is still 
edited by his son, and ranks high among the most useful publications 
of the country. 

As regards newspapers, the old plan was to borrow a daily paper, 
and to pay for the loan a penny an hour : now, although the Times 
continues at the price of threepence — which it is well worth — to which 
it was reduced from the long-familiar sevenpence, any other paper is 
bought for a penny. I suppose that for every one who read a daily 
paper half a century ago, there are now a hundred readers. I leave 
it to others to contrast the statistics of 1883 with those of 1823. 

The following is an extract from the " Newspaper Press Direc- 
tory" for 1882 : 

"There are now published in the United Kingdom, 1,986 Newspapers, 
distributed as follows : 
England — 

London .... 378 

Provinces . . . 1,087 — 1.465 

Wales . . . . . 66 

Scotland ..... 181 

Ireland . . . . . 154 

Isles ...... 20 

Of these there are — 

123 Daily Papers published in England ; 
4 " " Wales; 

21 " " Scotland; 

18 " " Ireland; 

2 " " British Isles. 

On reference to the first edition of this useful Directory, for the year 1846, we 
find the following interesting facts — viz., that in that year there were published 
in the United Kingdom 551 Journals; of these 14 were issued daily — viz., 12 
in England and 2 in Ireland ; but, in 1882, there are now established and cir- 
culated 1,986 papers, of which no fewer than 168 are issued daily, showing 
that the Press of the country has more than trebled during the last thirty-five 
years. The increase in Daily Papers has been still more remarkable ; the 
Daily Issues standing 168, against 14 in 1846." 

What a contrast is presented to an old man by the pictures of 
then and now ! Fifty years ago intelligence reached us, after about 
a week, of what they were doing in Russia, and sometimes as long 
to know what they were about in Paris ; while it took a month to 
hear news from Egypt, three months to obtain tidings from India, 
and six months to get any from Australia ! 

We pass unheeded wonderful facts that are daily events ; but 
who, half a century ago, would have prophesied a time when we 
could know, for a certainty, at six o'clock in the morning of any day 



78 LETTER POSTAGE. 

exactly what was occurring at the close of the day preceding in 
twenty different capitals of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America ? The 
subject is altogether too great and grand for appropriate treatment 
here. 

Every class and calling has now its own special newspaper, every 
interest being represented — tailors, grocers, potters — no profession or 
calling, in fact, being without its " representative," while every town 
in England has its local organ. 

Of the admirable manner in which every department of the lead- 
ing newspapers is conducted it is needless for me to speak. 

Many newspapers contain daily a leading article, so admirably 
written, so eloquently and wisely considered, so logically argued, or 
so vituperatively scathing as to throw " Junius " into the shade. If 
to-day it " tells " and is forgotten to-morrow — it is only because to- 
morrow sends forth one as good. 

The Old Days of Letter-Postage. — To this branch of my 
subject properly belong some other topics that used to be classed 
under the general term, " taxes on knowledge." I have described 
those that particularly affected newspapers. Of scarcely less impor- 
tance was the reduction in the postage of letters — a change, perhaps, 
as mighty in its results on the welfare of humankind. It has been 
so recently brought under the notice of the existing generation by 
the death of the venerable gentleman to whom we are indebted for 
the universal boon, that much space is not required to draw attention 
to it ; but it can be rightly appreciated only by those whose experi- 
ence carries them back to the year 1840, when the postage of a let- 
ter to any part of the British dominions was reduced to a penny for 
each letter, and that letter of any weight within half an ounce.* 

There are few of ripe years who can not turn out, from some ob- 
scure nook, letters dated half a century ago, and read upon them the 
marks that continue legible, showing that to various parts of the 
United Kingdom the charge for a double letter (that is to say, which 
contained more than one sheet of a fixed weight, were it a scrap of 
paper, say a stamped receipt) varied from seven-pence to thirteen- 
pence. It is almost certain that the letter will be crossed, and prob- 

* The House of Commons Committee, in 1838, advised payment in advance 
and the adoption of stamped covers ; the Queen's-head stamp was an after-thought. 
A premium was offered for the best design for a cover. Three thousand designs 
were sent in to the Treasury ; that of Mulready, R. A., was preferred. Examples 
may be found in the cabinets of the curious. It was a wood engraving, the work 
of a famous wood-engraver, John Thompson. 

Spring Rice (Lord Monteagle), who was at that time Chancellor of the Ex- 
chequer, was so apprehensive of a deficiency in the revenue being caused thereby, 
that he refused to recommend the resolution unless Parliament " agreed to make 
good any resulting deficiency." 



SHIFTS TO AVOID POSTAGE. 



79 



ably again crossed in red ink, the first object being to write much, 
the next to keep the letter within weight. The paper was of course 
always thin, and nearly as much time was required to read it as to 
write it. 

It was posted and addressed for delivery, the deliveries being 
once a day, and letters frequently had to be sent for to the post-of- 
fice. There were no smart fellows, letter-laden, with their well-known 
rap-tap at every door. Letters were of course kept till " called for," 
and those who have preserved old letters will find it not uncommon 
to observe that between the posting and delivery weeks had elapsed. 
The letter had not been called for at the office — that was all. 

To write a letter was, therefore, an undertaking ; the having little 
to say was a ready excuse for saying nothing. " I would not put 
you to the expense of postage," was a sentence then as common as 
"Yours truly" is now. Of course those who lived at a distance 
from post-towns (a post-town being then as distinguishing a term as 
borough town is now) had to wait for chances, except in the greater 
houses, where a post-boy was one of the regular servants, for whom 
a pony and a bag were kept ; the latter slung across his shoulders, he 
rode in for letters, and, when there were any, brought them back. 

It was by no means uncommon for a person to know there was a 
letter waiting for him at the post-office ; nay, it had been seen by 
neighbors stuck prominently in the window. He had not the means 
to release it ; in course of time it was duly transmitted to the " dead- 
letter office," and he heard no more of it. The evil was submitted 
to as among the inevitable. Comparatively few letters were sent. It 
was not rare at the commencement of the nineteenth century for a 
whole city to be without a correspondent for a day or more. Robert 
Chambers told me he had conversed with a person who remembered 
the mail-bag coming into Edinburgh, and, when examined, con- 
tained one letter.* 

It is needless to say that to avoid paying postage there were many 
discreditable shifts. It was common to send a newspaper, making a 
pin-hole at several words, which, when put together, conveyed the 
information desired. I remember witnessing a case of fraud. A 
man went to the post-office window (it was generally a small, narrow 
slit to avoid hazard of a " snatch "), and finding a letter there for 
him, put on a " poor mouth," and said, " Sir, I can't read ; will you 
be so good as to read it for me ? " " Certainly," said the courteous 
postmaster. So he read out all the home and business news, on 
which the man bowed, and said, "Thank'ee, sir," and walked away, 

* " Within my recollection the London post was brought north in a small mail- 
cart ; and men are yet alive who recollect when it came down with only one single 
letter for Edinburgh, addressed to the manager of the British Linen Company." 
— Sir Walter Scott, in " Redgauntlet." 



80 MEMBERS' FRANKS. 

leaving the debt to be discharged by the King. No doubt a hundred 
such incidents might be communicated to the curious reader. It was 
a very common trick to write with milk on the cover of a newspaper 
(newspapers went free, as being already taxed) ; the cover, when 
held to the fire, became legible and readable. Of course every 
tradesman's parcel, transmitted from one town to another, contained 
a bundle of letters for distribution on arrival. There was a power to 
open such parcels and make a search for such contraband, but the 
power was seldom exercised. The House of Commons in 1828 re- 
ported that " the illicit conveyance of letters prevails to an enormous 
extent, and the law is impotent to arrest the practice." In all parts 
of the kingdom carriers admitted that they were in the habit of carry- 
ing daily — some as many as sixty letters from one place to another. 
One bookseller in Glasgow was not caught until he had been in 
practice so long that he confessed to having sent twenty thousand 
letters otherwise than through the post. In fact, the offense of 
cheating the post-office was considered even more venial than that of 
robbing any other branch of the revenue. 

Harriet Martineau tells us that Coleridge walking somewhere in 
the Lake district, saw a postman tender a letter to a woman who, 
after careful examination, declined to receive it, on the ground that 
she could not afford to pay for it. The poet, however, released it 
and gave it to her, when she explained that it was from her brother ; 
that they had arranged a scheme by which certain marks on the 
cover should convey certain intelligence, and that all she wanted to 
know she had learned from examining the outside. 

Peers and members of Parliament had the privilege of sending 
letters free ; the name, date, and address to be written outside in the 
member's own hand, and the weight not to exceed one ounce. As a 
letter so franked was usually double or treble, care was taken to pre- 
vent its turning the scale : if it did, payment was exacted accord- 
ingly. The member was allowed to frank ten daily, all he franked 
over that number were charged to recipients — the weightiest being 
selected for payment. Such mistakes of over-franking were frequent. 
The privilege was abolished in 1840. Collections of franks are now 
to be seen in the hands of collectors of autographs. I have examined 
a book that contained six thousand franks of peers and members of 
Parliament.* 

It was surely an inspired thought — that which entered the mind 
of a comparatively obscure and friendless man — out of which arose 

* I remember asking Dick Martin for a frank. " To be sure, my dear boy," 
said Dick — who never refused anything. When he had signed it he laid down his 
pen, sighed, and exclaimed, " I vow to God that's the twentieth I have signed to- 
day." " Thank ye, colonel," said I ; " I won't post it." 






THE TRIUMPH. gl 

"the penny postage." * But it was deemed a wild fancy to contend 
that a change could be effected without loss to the revenue. No 
doubt it would be a national benefit, but the nation could not afford 
the luxury ! At the very commencement of the movement Rowland 
Hill called upon me. I gave him the heartiest sympathy, and all 
the aid I could. I was at that time — in 1839 — editing the Britannia 
newspaper. No doubt the plan was costly, but it was amply worth 
all it could possibly cost : no sacrifice was too great. That was the 
reasoning at the time, although after-calculation and reflection con- 
vinced Mr. Hill that the project would be attended by gain rather 
than loss. Not long afterward the truly great man was hailed as a 
foremost benefactor of all humankind, f 

I remember an incident I was told at the time ; it may be true, 
but it may have been an invention, for I have not seen it recorded 
as I heard it. Rowland Hill saw a decently garbed young woman 
sitting on a doorstep near the Post-Office, sobbing bitterly. In an- 
swer to questions, she said, " There is in there a letter from my 
mother, and I can't get it ; they ask sevenpence, and I have but a 
penny." Mr. Hill, having released it, went on his way pondering. 
I am impressed with the conviction that this small seed contained a 
great tree ; that incalculable blessings to hundreds of millions in 
every part of the world arose out of that trifling " event." 

In 1840 the banner of victory waved over the home of the victor. 
A contented Parliament granted him a sum of ^20,000 ; he retained 
his full salary of ^2,000 per annum, awarded him for life ; he was 
knighted ; the University of Oxford gave him the degree of D. C. L. ; 
within a few months of his death he was made a freeman of London 
City ; and, on the 4th of September, 1879, his honored remains were 
deposited in Westminster Abbey. I copy a passage from the Times : 

" It is not easy to give any clear notion of the results of his great scheme. 
We can state that about 106 millions of chargeable letters and newspapers 
were sent through the Post-Office in 1839, ar >d that 1,478 millions were sent 

* " The blessing immortally associated with the name of Rowland Hill was not 
the fruit of a casual happy thought. It was the achievement of a nature that had 
been right nobly trained. It emanated from a home conspicuous for plain living 
and original thinking, where not only was each member of the family taught to 
make the well-being of the rest his chief concern, but to form a high ideal of his 
life's work, to look beyond the little sphere of kindred and to fit himself to do 
something outside in the great world for the comfort and happiness of his fellow- 
men." — Canon Duckworth. 

f Rowland Hill was born at Kidderminster, December 3, 1795, and died at 
Hampstead in 1879. A statue of the great reformer honors him in his native town ; 
there is another in Birmingham. A third was, on the 17th June, 1882, placed in 
front of the Royal Exchange, in the City of London. He was appointed, in 1846, 
secretary to the Postmaster-General, and in 1854 he became Chief Secretary and 
practical director of the Post-Office. In i860, he received the honor of K. C. B., 
and, after four years' more successful service, he retired on a pension of his full 
salary, receiving a highly complimentary minute from the Treasury on the success 
of his measures. 



82 THE FINAL RECOMPENSE. 

during the year i879-'8o. But the mind can not grasp such numbers as these. 
Something more is understood when we are told that in 1839 the average 
number of letters per head was three and that last year it was thirty-two. 
If, however, we would rightly understand all that he has done for his fellow- 
men, we must remember that every civilized country in the world has more 
or less adopted his plan ; that communication has been made so certain, so 
rapid, and so cheap, that the distant traveler, the emigrant — nay, even the 
exile — feels that those whom he has left behind him in his old home are in 
one way still very near to him. Sir Rowland Hill has, indeed, done almost 
more than any other single man to bind the nations together and make the 
whole world kin. 

"The number of inland letters dealt with in the year was 1,127,997,500, 
showing an increase of 28 per cent on the previous year ; the number of 
post-cards was 114,458,400, showing an increase of 27 per cent; the number 
of book packets and circulars was 213,963,000, or an increase of 8 - 6 per cent, 
and of newspapers 130,518,400, or an increase of 0*3 per cent. Taking the 
correspondence of all kinds, the number was 1,586,937,000, showing an aver- 
age of 46 per head of the population, and an increase of 3*3 per cent over the 
previous year. The number of letters registered in the United Kingdom dur- 
ing the year was 8,739,191, being an increase of 21-3 per cent, and more than 
double the number dealt with in 1877, before the reduction of the registration 
fee. No fewer than 5,762,853 registered letters passed through the chief 
office, and 47,000 parcels containing Christmas presents were dealt with in 
that office as compared with 30,000 in 1878." 

To this may be added the marvelous changes that have followed 
in Post-Office legislation — savings-banks, money orders, register- 
stamps, covers for newspapers, life insurances, and a score of other 
improvements of prodigious importance to every class of the com- 
munity. 

Thus, in the case of Rowland Hill, neither the fame nor the 
gains were posthumous. At the age of eighty-six he put on immor- 
tality — honored, respected, loved, and rewarded for public services 
and private virtues. 

It is the fate of most of those who bless mankind to die in faith, 
like the worthies of the older world, only seeing afar off the promise 
of the good they toiled for — a dim vision of the promised land from 
Mount Nebo. But here is one who had been spared for forty years, 
from the day of his victory, to see all his opponents convinced, all 
his hopes realized, all his calculations verified, all his predictions 
more than fulfilled ! 



RECOLLECTIONS 
OF THE HOUSES OF LORDS AND COMMONS. 

The Giants in both Houses. — At the time to which I take my 
readers back, there were giants in both Houses — statesmen whose 
names are the glories of their country, and will be so when many 
generations have been numbered with the Past. It is not my pur- 
pose to treat of any of them at length. There are those who can 
better estimate and portray the character of each ; in nearly all the 
cases under notice that has, indeed, been done. My object is little 
more than this : to bring, as nearly as I can, before the reader the 
person I shall picture, depending mainly upon my own memory. 
The strong and lasting impression produced, though it may have 
lain dormant for half a century, can not, I think, fail in leading to 
accuracy of portraiture ; for the great men I shall paint, or rather 
sketch, are such as stamp an indelible remembrance on the minds of 
all by whom they have been seen and heard. 

The Duke of Wellington. — Thousands are able to recall to 
memory the Duke of Wellington in his decline ; few can remember 
him in his prime — the soldier-statesman — " the Iron Duke " — the 
man of iron head, iron hand, iron heel, and iron heart. Of those 
who conquered with him at Waterloo nearly all are gone, though 
there remain many who, when the body that had " tabernacled " the 
great soul was conveyed from Apsley House, in 1852, to the Cathe- 
dral of St. Paul's, stood in the streets or watched from windows — 
witnesses of the homage paid to the great man who was the pride 
and glory of his country and his age, and who will, for ever and 
ever, remain the pride and the glory of both, notwithstanding that the 
Irish poet writes of him as of one on whom " Fame unwillingly 
shines " ; * and " the Liberator " handed him down to posterity as 
" the stunted corporal " to whom Ireland had given birth — " to its 
shame." 

* " That chief, so coldly great, 
Whom Fame unwillingly shines upon." 

— Moore, The Irish Slave. 



5 4 THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. 

The Duke was no orator, but he gradually improved in speaking, 
and latterly spoke with little of the hesitation that was his disadvan- 
tage when less accustomed to address an audience in the House. 
But his sentences seemed jerked out ; they were stray shots rather 
than volleys, yet seldom failed to hit the marks at which they were 
aimed. 

He had an iron aspect ; his features, rarely mobile, seldom 
seemed to second his words. In step he was steady and unhesitat- 
ing, though not dignified. His hands and arms, when moved at all, 
seemed as if a machine had set them in motion. His voice was im- 
pressive only when stirred by strong conviction. Without doubt 
much of his power over the minds of fellow-statesmen arose from 
their confidence in the soundness of his judgment ; and, perhaps, in 
the House of Peers there were many who reasoned as did the vet- 
eran when the Duke rode into the battle-field, and a young recruit 
expressed surprise at the commonplace look of the hero — " I would 
rather see his face here to-day than twenty thousand such recruits 
as you ! " 

When, in 1828, the Duke was made Prime Minister, perhaps no 
man in England was more astonished than himself. Not long before 
he was elevated to that high office by George IV, he had protested 
against the suggested appointment as an absurdity — as, indeed, an 
impossibility. Of his prudence as well as resolution he gave ample 
proof, guiding the vessel through the breakers, when environed by 
perils — being, in fact, as was his great predecessor, " the pilot that 
weathered the storm." It will not be denied that, by his change of 
conduct, if not of opinion, upon some of the most important events 
that ever swayed the destiny of a kingdom, he created a great future 
for his country, while averting an " imminent and terrible crisis." 

More than once the Duke " enjoyed " an enormous amount of 
unpopularity ; it did not continue long. I saw him once when, mob 
favor having returned to him, the most sweet voices of the crowd 
cheered him as he entered Apsley House ; he turned suddenly 
round, and, in a manner not to be mistaken, pointed to the iron 
shutters which then protected his plate-glass.* 

It would be idle to multiply anecdotes of the Duke. Few men 
were more talked about or better known. Yet his course of life, 
after his victories in a hundred fights, was singularly simple and un- 
ostentatious. His bedroom contained a small iron bed — the cham- 
ber was a copy of his tent, as plainly furnished as if it had to be 
moved at an hour's notice. The anecdote is well known that illus- 
trates his character : Some one protesting against such restricted 

* Among evidences of popular hatred that at one time raged against him, I 
may give the following : We had an Irish cook, and so intense was her hatred of 
her illustrious countryman, that she changed a shilling into penny pieces wherewith 
to pelt the windows of Apsley House. She was not long with us. 



THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. 



85 



accommodation, said, " Why, in such a bed you have not room to 
turn round ! " " Turn round ! " was the Duke's comment ; " you do 
not need to do it ; when you want to turn round it is time to turn 
out." 

Maria Edgeworth (at Edgeworthstown) told us a touching story 
of the Duchess of Wellington — having previously shown us a bundle 
of her letters. Knowing she was about to die, indeed very shortly 
before her death, she caused herself to be removed from her cham- 
ber, and placed on a sofa in a room which contained a large number 
of the trophies that had been, from time to time, presented to her 
illustrious husband — desiring to look upon them once again before 
she quitted earth. Miss Edgeworth spoke of the devotion of the 
lady to her lord as even " passing the love of women," and described 
in strong terms the respectful homage with which he always treated 
her. The world has not given the Iron Duke credit for domestic 
affection — for the faithful discharge of home duties. But who can 
pry into the secrets of the heart ? We know that when the third 
William died, a portrait of Queen Mary was found suspended by a 
ribbon to his neck, which the wiles of half a dozen Dutch sirens had 
not been powerful enough to remove. 

It is surely a gratification to give currency to the statement of 
Samuel Rogers concerning " the great captain of the age " : 

" The Duke says that ' the Lord's Prayer alone is an evidence of 
the truth of Christianity ' ; so admirably is that prayer accommodated 
to all our wants." 

Lord de Grey, who printed a book which he termed " Character- 
istics of the Duke of Wellington apart from Military Talents," thus 
sums up his estimate of the hero — and there is no reason to doubt 
that posterity has indorsed his verdict — that " he was one of the most 
noble, great, and glorious spirits that ever existed in man." 

Is there in Ireland any memorial statue of the Duke of Welling- 
ton ? Do any tourists make pilgrimage to the ruined home at Dar- 
gan ? They may find a dilapidated Corinthian pillar at the nearest 
town — Trim, the seat of the Wellesleys when the soldier-chief was in 
his infancy and boyhood.* But, although Dargan has passed away 
from the family, it can not fail to excite deep interest and fervent 
patriotism anywhere but in Ireland. The house was accidentally 
burned, and remains a ruin — or, at least, was so when I saw it — of 
bare and broken walls ; the neighboring trees were ruthlessly cut 
down by an unprincipled tenant. The two boys Wellesley and Wel- 

* I obtained during a visit to Dargan conclusive evidence that the name was 
originally Wesley ; the name being written, "A. Wesley" (the Duke's autograph) 
in the corporation books. 



86 LORD CASTLEREAGH. 

lington were born in Dublin. I do not know the house : I question 
if anybody does : to the shame of Irish archaeologists and patriots, 
be that dismal fact recorded ! 

Among the glories of Ireland the name will be imperishable ; and 
some day his own country — in common with all other countries of 
the world — will accord justice to the great soldier-statesman, and 
honor his memory as chiefest of the great men in an age when of 
great men there were many. 

The character of the great Duke has never been better — perhaps 
never so well and truly — portrayed as it has been in this sonnet writ- 
ten by Benjamin DTsraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield : 

" Not only that thy puissant arm could bind 
The tyrant of a world, and, conquering Fate, 
Enfranchise Europe, do I deem thee great ; 
But that in all thy actions I do find 
Exact propriety ; no gusts of mind 
Fitful and wild, but that continuous state 
Of ordered impulse mariners await 
In some benignant and enriching wind — 
The breath ordained of Nature. Thy calm mien 
Recalls old Rome, as much as thy high deed ; 
Duty thine only idol, and serene 
When all are troubled ; in the utmost need 
Prescient ; thy country's servant ever seen, 
Yet sovereign of thyself, whate'er may speed." 

Viscount Castlereagh. — I heard Lord Castlereagh * speak but 
once ; it was a short time before death removed him from the sym- 
pathy of friends and the rancor of foes. Few men ever had more 
bitter, relentless, and resolute enemies. He was intensely hated, not 
by his own countrymen alone, but by all their abettors in every coun- 
try of the world. It would be difficult now to realize the extent of 
abhorrence to which he was subjected, from the time — 1789 — of his 
entry into public life to the terrible close of it on the 10th of August, 
1822. No doubt he had given signs of insanity sufficient to satisfy 
the coroner's jury. On that head a letter, " private," was written, 
on the day preceding his suicide, by the Duke of Wellington to his 
doctor, warning him to be on the watch. It supplied conclusive 
evidence. Whether or not brain-disease resulted from over-toil, or 
whether, as was whispered, it was the consequence of a plot, cun- 
ningly but demoniacally laid, to subject him to an abhorrent charge, 
it is, I suppose, impossible to say ; but he died by his own hand, and 
Byron among others gloated with fiendish joy over the self-slaugh- 

* Better known by that title than by that which he inherited on the death of 
his brother, Marquis of Londonderry, an Irish Peer. 



THE BURIAL OF CASTLEREAGH 87 

tered statesman, commemorating the awful event in a line of " Don 
Juan " — 

" Carotid artery cutting Castlereagh ! " 

As I have said, I heard him but once. He was an ungraceful 
and unbecoming speaker, swaying his long body to and fro, jerking 
out his sentences, and seeming to illustrate the comprehensive line 
in Hamlet : " Words ! words ! words ! " Although a caricature, 
Moore's picture of him may be accepted as " from the life " : 

" Why is a pump like Viscount Castlereagh ? 
Because it is a slender thing of wood, 
That up and down the awkward arm doth sway, 
And coolly spout and spout and spout away, 
In one weak, washy, everlasting flood." 

Brougham, writing of Castlereagh, describes his rhetoric as often 
baffling alike the gravity of the Treasury bench and the art of the 
reporter — "leaving a wondering audience at a loss to conjecture how 
any one could ever exist endowed with humbler pretensions to the 
name of orator." But he adds, " He had three things in his favor 
— tact, good humor, and courage." 

I was present when the " self-slaughtered " body was laid in a 
tomb in Westminster Abbey, between the graves of Pitt and Fox. 
I shall never forget my sensation of horror when, as the body was 
taken from the bearers, there arose from the attendant crowd a howl 
of execration, such as my fancy could not have conceived at such a 
time in such a place. Obviously the insult had been prearranged : 
it was by no means a simultaneous burst of indignation. Persons 
appeared to have been placed in various parts of the crowd, and I 
heard a sort of low whistle — a signal, no doubt — when there broke 
out a positive yell, from several quarters, at the same time. It was 
impossible to hear it without a shudder.* I noticed one young man 
close to me who placed a sort of tube to his mouth and hooted. By 
a natural ebullition of wrath, I struck him in the face, and was in- 
stantly thrown to the ground and violently kicked. It would have 
been easy to identify those who thus insulted the living and the 
dead ; but the matter was " hushed up." Groaning and yelling con- 
tinued during the whole of the funeral service. Thus, "Castle- 
reagh " was laid to rest, the latest blast of a turbulent life being, so 
to speak, in his ears when he took his place among the illustrious 
departed. 

He was a tall man, but of awkward and certainly ungraceful 
form : as Lord Russell wrote of him, " an obscure orator, garnishing 
his speeches with obscure metaphors. . . . He had no classical quota- 

* " I am almost sorry to have lived till I have seen in England a collection of 
persons so brutalized, as, upon the taking the coffin at the Abbey out of the hearse, 
to have received it with cheering." — Lord Eldon. 



88 THE KING AT DUNLEARY. 

tion, no happy illustration, no historical examples, with which to 
adorn argument and enforce conviction." Yet we learn from the 
same high authority, " he was bold, calm, good-humored, and dis- 
passionate — a thorough gentleman — ready to bear and forbear with 
temper, seldom roused and never excited. A bold, brave, energetic, 
unscrupulous man, he carried the Union as no other power could 
have done — by cajolery and bribery, no doubt, but at least with his 
own conviction that it was the only way to preserve Ireland from 
domestic discord, commercial ruin, and civil war." 

That his country will ever modify its sentence, is not to be 
thought of : in Ireland his memory will ever be associated with all 
that most excites hatred. He carried the Union ; that was his crime 
in the eyes of his countrymen : not of all of them, however — there 
are very many, and they are the best, who regard that measure as a 
boon to England and a blessing to Ireland ; at all events a neces- 
sity, the non-effecting of which would have been unmitigated evil to 
both countries and a disaster to humanity. 

Yet he was bold enough to accompany George IV when he vis- 
ited Ireland in 1821 ; but the King bore in his hand the olive- 
branch : it was more effective armor than would have been helmet, 
breastplate, and greaves of tempered steel. No Irishman of all the 
motley crowd would have dared to satiate vengeance at the expense 
of hospitality.* I stood very near him when he landed, and cer- 
tainly heard no shouts of abhorrence to mar the charm of the uni- 
versal greeting that hailed the monarch and his suite on the quay of 
Dunleary. 

Of course on that occasion much " blarney " was given and taken 
on both sides. The farewell words of his Majesty were these : 
" Knowing the generosity and warmth of heart that distinguish the 
character of his faithful people in Ireland, he left them with a heart 
full of affection." Lord Castlereagh was not the only one present 
who laughed in his sleeve, barely twenty years after the Union. 

I find this passage in the New Monthly, 1831 : 

" The interests of some, and the personal affection of others, for the 
King produced the demonstration ; but it was at best only the mala sarta 
amicitia. If a stranger to Ireland requires any proof of this, he will find it 
in the hollow and heartless acclamations which have hailed the arrival of 
some of the King's attendants. If there ever was a measure, before which 
opposing factions temporarily united, it was the measure of the Union. They 
poured upon it their unanimous execration, denounced it as a calamity which 
laid their independence in the dust, and through each succeeding year held it 
up as the bane of their prosperity and the annihilation of their name. And 

* These words were written before the assassins of 1882 stained the green- 
sward of Phoenix Park. That blood-stain another spring may have obliterated ; 
but so long as Ireland is named in history the foul blot can never be erased. 



GEORGE CANNING. 



8 9 



yet, in twenty years after it passed — even in that very city which it had chiefly 
prostrated, whose mansions it had untenanted, whose merchants it had im- 
poverished, whose streets it had depopulated, and whose splendor, as the seat 
of legislation, it had eclipsed for ever — even there the reviled author of that 
measure was so hailed by the plaudits of radical consistency, that if he did 
not altogether supersede the Sovereign, he may at least now with truth ex- 
claim — 

" ' Divisum imperium cum Jove — habui ! — ' " 

Under such circumstances, in 182 1, George IV set his foot, for 
the first and last time, on Irish soil. A paltry cenotaph marks the 
spot. Dunleary thenceforward became, in compliment to the mon- 
arch, Kingstown — a name it has ever since borne. I was present on 
that memorable occasion, and was stupid enough to write and pub- 
lish a poem about it — " Ottava Rima — to commemorate the King's 
visit." There may be something like excuse for me ; but if I had 
been an Irishman and a Roman Catholic, I think I would sooner 
have choked myself with the dirt upon which the foot of the King 
was pressed. 

An address approved by O'Connell had this passage : " You will 
find a soldier in every one of us ; and, in the defense of your throne 
and the liberties it sustains, our lives are at your service ! " 

And, " on the day of his embarkation, Mr. O'Connell, at the head 
of a Catholic deputation, presented him with a crown of laurel ! " I 
think this statement can barely receive credit, but I find it in the 
" Life of Daniel O'Connell," by his son, John O'Connell, M. P. — a 
biography that does nothing, or less than nothing, for the memory 
of his father, and is, perhaps, as wretched a piece of " editing " as 
the language supplies. 

And this, too, is a resolution passed at a meeting of Catholics — 
O'Connell in the chair : 

" Resolved, That the paternal solicitude and benevolence mani- 
fested in this most gracious communication of our beloved Sovereign 
toward all classes and descriptions of his Irish subjects merits our 
enthusiastic gratitude and admiration." 

What could the King say ? What but this — which he did say ? 
He addressed the crowd : " My heart has always been Irish ; from 
the day it first beat I have loved Ireland. I shall drink all your 
healths in a bumper of good Irish whisky." 

George Canning. — The greatest of all the statesmen and orators 
of the period with which I am dealing was, beyond question, George 
Canning. He had made his first speech in Parliament in 1794. 

Following Canning one day, who was carrying a Bill of some 
moment to the House of Lords, and being close beside him, I could 
not help whispering to a fellow-reporter by my side, " What a splen- 
did incarnation of the Deity ! " Tall, over six feet in height, he had 
an upright, rather thin, and singularly manly, figure ; the head well 



go GEORGE CANNING. 

set above the shoulders. He dressed as became a gentleman — as far 
removed from slovenliness as from foppishness. The head was 
grandly fine, very bald ; small whiskers ; the features strongly marked, 
yet approaching delicacy of cut, and firmly outlined ; the forehead 
high and broad, giving proof of large creative power and indomitable 
energy and determination ; yet combined with a grace and gentle- 
ness of manner that would hardly be miscalled if called womanly. 

I see him at this moment, as I saw him when (on the 12th De- 
cember, 1826), standing a little in advance of the Treasury bench, he 
pronounced the memorable and often-quoted words, " I called the 
new world into existence to redress the balance of the old ! " There 
was a thrill throughout the audience — a great nation's representatives 
— as if not a thunderbolt, but an archangel bearing one, had de- 
scended into the arena. 

The House has had some startling effects since then, but the ex- 
citement produced by that single sentence was almost terrific. The 
House rose ; few members kept their seats ; the stately dignity of 
the assembly was gone ; there was absolutely waving of hats, and the 
cheers were loud and long. Some minutes passed before Canning 
could resume his speech. 

The great orator stood with folded arms surveying the effect of 
the few words that had acted like an electric shock. " His chest 
heaved and dilated, a noble pride curled his lip." He was like a 
war-horse pawing the ground at the sound of a trumpet-call to battle ; 
such excitement in so staid an assembly was probably never seen be- 
fore — certainly has never been seen since. 

It must be taken into account that the words were spoken by the 
first orator of the day — in a voice of mingled melody and power — a 
man who, in form and feature, might have been the inspiration of 
some Greek ideal when manly vigor had replaced the slightness and 
grace of youth. He was what Antinous might have been when a man 
of fifty. I imagine his voice, in common usage, was gentle ; it was 
generally so when he spoke upon ordinary topics to the House. 

I was present in the House on that evening when there took 
place the memorable duel — of words — between Canning and his 
great rival Brougham. It was on the 17th of April, 1823. A slight 
reference is made to it in a Life of Canning by Robert Bell, but I 
have never seen the scene pictured. Canning was the Foreign Sec- 
retary, the head of the Government being Lord Liverpool ; Plunkett 
was the Irish Attorney-General ; other upholders of the Catholic 
" claims " were among the Ministers. Canning, with other members 
of the Government, had deemed it prudent to shelve the Catholic 
question for a year. The Opposition thought it ought not so to be, 
and, headed by Sir Francis Burdett, protested against the policy of 
Ministers. 

Brougham, after complimenting Peel, the Home Secretary, and 



BROUGHAM AND CANNING. 



91 



others who were at least consistent in their hostility, poured out the 
full vial of his wrath against those who, while professing to be its 
advocates, deserted and betrayed the cause, and traced the careers 
of traitors from Judas Iscariot downward. Brougham spoke from 
the second Opposition bench. Canning, with folded arms, sat on 
the Treasury bench opposite, apparently an indifferent listener. 

" And now," said Brougham, " I approach the right honorable 
gentleman opposite." There was a sudden pause ; the House antici- 
pated what was coming, apparently with a shudder of apprehension. 
He has been guilty of monstrous truckling for the purpose of ob- 
taining office. The whole history of political tergiversation can fur- 
nish — " The sentence was cut short. Canning suddenly rose, like 
a tiger roused from his lair by the shot that vitally touched him, and 
exclaimed, " Jt is false ! " As he resumed his seat a profound silence 
reigned throughout the House that endured for full half a minute, 
when the solemn yet musical voice of Manners Sutton, the Speaker, 
broke it with the single word, " Order ! " Brougham, who had con- 
tinued standing, was in the act of descending to leave the House, 
when Hume, who sat next to him, seized his coat and pulled him 
back. Even in those days, much more a few years previously, there 
was but one way of settling such a matter — at twelve paces, two 
" friends " looking on.* 

Since we have had a reformed Parliament such incidents have 
become somewhat common in the House ; but in 1824 it was a sud- 
den horror, as terrible as the specter that drew Priam's curtain at the 
dead of night. To hear a minister of State give the lie direct to a 
leader of the Opposition was an unthought-of event, and a duel ap- 
peared as necessary as blood-letting in apoplexy. Explanations, how- 
ever, followed ; considerate friends on both sides interfered ; the 
marvelous peacemaker " If " triumphed, and pistols were left undis- 
charged. 

The courage of Canning was not questioned ; that of Brougham 
was. Canning had fought Castlereagh, who wounded him ; and he 
was known to be always ready to give the " satisfaction " that was 
then in vogue. It was not his fault that he had not had a duel with 
Hobhouse, to whom he wrote a letter denouncing him as " a liar and 
a slanderer, who only wanted courage to be an assassin " — intimat- 
ing that he was " waiting for an answer." 

* It had been thus when a somewhat similar broil took place between Grattan 
and Fitzgibbon in the Irish House of Commons, when the latter applied unpleasant 
words to the former ; Grattan beckoned Fitzgibbon, and both quitted the House, 
every member in it knowing well what they meant to do. In about half an hour 
afterward Grattan returned, apologized for a " necessary " absence, and addressed 
the House, regretting that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was not in his place to 
hear him. The right honorable gentleman had been " winged," and was then in 
the custody of two physicians in his own house. I do not know where this anec- 
dote is recorded, but it is h propos to my story. 



92 GEORGE CANNING. 

I see now, in clear vision, the great orator, his tall form seemingly- 
taller by a foot, his face flushed, his eye flashing, as he stretched out 
his right arm, advanced a step forward, and uttered the three words 
that shook the House — although not a sound broke the appalling si- 
lence. There was a striking contrast between their personal appear- 
ances — Canning in indignant wrath, and Brougham, whose advan- 
tages of form and features were so few and so limited ! 

After the Speaker's vain effort to induce " retraction," and a mo- 
tion that both parties should be committed to the custody of the 
Sergeant-at-Arms, a sort of compromise was effected. Brougham 
continued the speech that had been thus interrupted, and an end 
was put to one of the most exciting incidents ever witnessed in the 
British House of Commons.* 

Some years afterward — in 1830 — a somewhat similar scene took 
place in the House. Mr. Brougham, in allusion to an implied threat 
of the Duke of Wellington to resign in case of a defeat of the Min- 
istry, said : " Him I accuse not ; I accuse you " (pointing with out- 
stretched hand to the Ministerial benches), "his flatterers, his mean, 
fawning parasites." Up rose Sir Robert Peel, with the question, 
" Does the honorable and learned gentleman presume to say of me 
that I am the fawning parasite of any man ? " 

Brougham's answer was prompt : " It is absurd, it is ridiculous to 
suppose I meant to allude to him ! I spoke of parasites as the J>essi- 
mum genus inimicorum." There was no breach of the peace. 

From the time when, in 1794, he made his maiden speech in the 
House, until 1827, when he died at Chiswick, no public man, not 
even Pitt, claimed and received so large a share of public comment 
as George Canning. There was no subject, however foreign to his 
previous studies, but — 

" The knot of it he would unloose, 
Familiar as his garter." 

Perhaps the highest encomium he ever received was from Sir James 
Mackintosh. 

" I know," he said, " that he was a man of the purest honor, that 
he was a man of the most rare and splendid talents ; renowned 
throughout Europe for his brilliant genius and philosophic thinking ; 
that with his best zeal, as well as with success, he applied that genius 
and those views of policy to advance the glory and the service of 
his country." 

His great rival, Brougham, writes of Canning's eloquence as 

* A motion was made that the Sergeant-at-Arms should take both the honor- 
able members into custody ; against which Brougham protested on the ground that 
if Mr. Canning had committed a breach of the rules of the House, he (Mr. 
Brougham) had been guilty of no such offense, complaining that the interruption 
had occurred when he had uttered but half the sentence he had intended to deliver. 



CANNING'S DEATH. o 3 

" brilliant but often tinsel." The praise he withholds from the orator 
he gives to the man : " Canning in all the relations of domestic life 
was blameless ; the delight of his family, as in them he placed his 
own." 

Though born in London, he was an Irishman in virtue of both 
parents. His mother, a Miss Costello, was, after the death of George 
Canning, one of the seven wives of a profligate actor, Reddish, and 
on his death married a third time a Mr. Hunn, a silk-mercer of Ex- 
eter. My father knew her intimately. I have often heard him de- 
scribe her as a singularly attractive woman, whose only fault was her 
continual talk of her "son in London." She had made no figure as 
an actress, although she played " Jane Shore " with David Garrick. 

It is recorded of Canning that " he made it a sacred rule to write 
to his mother every week " when he was a young student and when 
he was Prime Minister of the greatest country of the world, for she 
did not die until 1827, in her eighty-first year. George Canning was 
born in 1770, and his father died a year afterward. It was com- 
mon to style the Prime Minister an " adventurer," but he came of a 
race of Irish gentlemen. Though Ireland was largely indebted to 
him for the boon of Catholic emancipation (to which he led the 
way), Ireland does not seem to have added his name to her list of 
worthies. 

He was but fifty-seven years old when he died. It was said, and 
I believe truly, that his death resulted from a cold caught in St. 
George's Chapel, Windsor, while attending at midnight the funeral 
of the Duke of York in January, 1827. The night was bitterly se- 
vere. No carpet nor matting had been laid on the bare stones. Lord 
Eldon placed his cocked hat under his feet and stood upon it. 
Stapleton says that Canning suggested to him the act that probably 
saved the old man's life ; unhappily he had not taken the same care 
of his own. 

On that mournful occasion I stood close to both those great men 
during the whole of the service. It was, in truth, a gloomy night. 
As soon as the impressive ceremony was ended, a carriage with four 
horses took back the reporters to town. Much of our work was 
written in pencil during the drive, and in the morning full details 
were in the newspapers.* 

In August, 1827, Canning was buried in Westminster Abbey. A 
statue of him is placed there, and another in the " garden " of the 
House in which he had won his triumphs. It is a masterpiece of the 
great sculptor, Chantrey. He had a fine subject, and did it justice. 
It is of bronze, and when first placed its color was a glaring green. 
It was commonly nicknamed " the Green Man and Still "—the well- 



* We had assembled in the drawing-room of Charles Knight, a bookseller of 
Windsor, then and always a kind and courteous gentleman. His name afterward 
became famous as one of the benefactors of humankind. 



94 



LORD ELDON. 



known name of a famous tavern and posting-house in Fleet Street. 
It is one of the few statues that grace the public thoroughfares of the 
Metropolis of which the country may be proud. 

Yet, in 1822, reform of Parliament was effectively and eloquently 
opposed by Canning, who vigorously defended the " rotten " bor- 
oughs. He " did not believe that to increase the power of the peo- 
ple, or rather to bring that power into direct, immediate, and inces- 
sant operation upon the House, would enable the House to discharge 
its functions more carefully." Canning carried his motion against 
Lord John Russell's motion for Parliamentary Reform by a majority 
of 269 to 164 in favor of it. 

In 1827, he said : " I am asked what I mean to do on the subject 
of Parliamentary Reform ? Why, I say, to oppose it — to oppose it 
to the end of my life in this House, as hitherto I have done." 

And in that same speech he said : " I am asked what I intend to 
do respecting the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts ? My 
answer is, to oppose it. ... I think that the exertions of the Legis- 
lature ought to be directed to the redress of practical and not theo- 
retical grievances. ... I will, therefore, oppose the repeal." 

Lord Eldon. — It would be hard to find a more perfect character 
than that of Lord Eldon. The domestic virtues were his no less 
than the loftier qualities that make the statesman and the patriot — 
industry, perseverance, unimpeachable integrity ! He may not have 
been generous, but he was ever just. He was buried by the side of 
his " beloved Bessie," his comforter in adversity, the sharer of his 
prosperity, his devoted friend and constant companion. The ring 
he directed to be buried with him might have told a soul-stirring and 
encouraging tale of early struggles to achieve success — mutually en- 
dured to be mutually triumphant. The honors he obtained were as 
truly hers as they were his. 

I saw the great and good man " lying in state " in his chamber at 
Hamilton Place. A throng passed through the somber apartment. 
It was not then, as it is now, the custom to lay flowers on the pall 
and coffin ; but a single sprig of myrtle some kindly — perhaps grate- 
ful — hand had placed there. It was the depth of winter : there was 
snow on the ground without, but the green leaves seemed emblematic 
of the future of the venerable man who had gone to his grave — to 
rise again and " flourish in immortal youth." 

His " presence " was not commanding, yet he looked dignified in 
his robes, and was certainly imposing when he walked from the 
woolsack to the bar of the House of Peers to receive a Bill from the 
Commons. 

When comparatively young, he was, according to Lord Campbell, 
" about the middle size, his figure slight and athletic, his eye bright 
and full, his smile remarkably benevolent, and his whole appearance 
prepossessing." I do not so recall him ; but I see him now presid- 



LORD ELDON. g$ 

ing at his court, or on the woolsack as " Speaker of the House of 
Lords " ; his large and bushy grizzled eyebrows pushing out from 
under a brow furrowed, yet indicating profound thought ; square 
features, the lower jaw as wide as the forehead — a forehead broad 
and high, straight up from the cheek-bones, with remarkable absence 
of ideality. If not cheerful, he was always courteous, gave sympathy 
to clients where he postponed judgment, and commented on the 
law's delay with a consolatory smile. Wilberforce said of him, " I 
feel sure he would rather die than make an unjust decision." He 
was certainly not an orator — not eloquent ; but I never heard him at 
a loss for words ; he never used the flowers of rhetoric, which have 
been likened to the red poppies of the corn-field, pleasant to those 
who desire eye-pleasing, but prejudicial to those who would reap the 
harvest. His manner and way of speaking were the opposites of 
graceful, and not even earnest — but they conveyed the idea of reso- 
lute determination in what he believed to be right — the thorough 
conviction of the speaker. 

Such is my portrait of Lord Chancellor Eldon ; it is tinged, per- 
haps, after a lapse of fifty years, by an incident that left an impres- 
sion on my memory which time has barely weakened and certainly 
not removed. I have recorded it in my Recollections of the News- 
paper Press. 

Charges of some kind against him, chiefly for delay, or postpone- 
ment of judgment, and occasionally for becoming wealthy at the cost 
of clients, were of annual recurrence in either the Lower or the 
Upper House. 

If his " hesitations (I quote Sir Robert Peel) had arisen from his 
indulgence in pleasure or in frivolous amusements, the public might 
have reprehended rightly ; but he was ever at work ; and if his decis- 
ions were slow, they were sure ; if he amassed a large fortune, it 
was but the fruit of labor and justly his due." * 

Lord Eldon and his brother, Lord Stowell, are among the most 
conspicuous and encouraging examples, so frequent in Great, Britain, 
of men achieving distinction by force of ability, industry, and integ- 
rity. Lord Eldon, though of better descent and fairer prospects 
than his immediate successor (Lord Lyndhurst), could have had no 
well-grounded expectation of rising to the loftiest position in the 

* I remember reporting a speech of Lord Eldon's in which he denied, as utterly 
untrue, the assertion that he annually received a very large sum as accruing to him 
from proceeds in cases of bankruptcy. The assaults on him had been exceedingly 
bitter. My report was this : " His lordship declared that, so far from receiving 
year after year the sum stated, he protested in the presence of God (here the noble 
and learned lord shed tears) that he had never during any one year received more 
than three fourths of that amount." No doubt in my haste in transcribing I had 
set down the " three fourths" in figures — %.. My horror may be imagined when 
I found it thus printed next morning in the New Times : The learned lord " sol- 
emnly declared that during no one year of his life had his income from that source 
exceeded three shillings and fourpence" 



96 LORD ELDON. 

state.* Yet he did so, by stern and resolute perseverance, untiring 
energy and industry, and incorruptible integrity ; for, though often 
subjected to calumny, there was no tittle of evidence of departure 
from the strict path of rectitude that " brings a man peace at the 
last." He set an example of piety as well as probity. His own 
words are, " I have no doubt of the Divine origin of the sacred vol- 
umes." His piety was fervent, though unostentatious. Some one in 
the New Monthly, 1832, wrote of him : 

" Habitually and practically, the influences of religion were present, and 
operative, and permanent within him — whether amid the perplexities of law, 
the struggles of power, or the sorrows of domestic bereavement — alike in his 
health and in his sickness, in his youth and in his age. With him religion 
was a matter of feeling as well as of conviction ; it was the stock on which 
his virtues grew ; his standard in action and his refuge in suffering." 

Yet no man has lived, in my time, who was subjected to such un- 
mitigated abuse as was Lord Chancellor Eldon. None have been 
subjected to more intense hatred : he was pursued by political op- 
ponents, often with a bitterness absolutely fiendish. He was a Tory 
of the old school, and opposed all changes as perilous to the consti- 
tution ; it was his sole "crime," but it was one that could not be 
condoned in the estimation of Reformers, in whose way he was a 
serious and dangerous stumbling-block. No doubt the stern posi- 
tion he took as regarded Catholic Emancipation strengthened, if it 
did not originate, the intense hatred to which he was subjected. On 
that exciting topic he was as immovable as the rock that has endured 
the fury of the storms of centuries. Happily he has been a false 
prophet ; but he was pure in motive, true to his conviction, faithful 
to his trust, and surely believed in the coming evils against which he 
solemnly and emphatically warned his country. I heard him utter in 
the House of Peers this remarkable sentence : 

" If he had a voice that would sound to the remotest corner of 
the empire, he would re-echo the principle which he most firmly be- 
lieved — that if ever a Roman Catholic was permitted to form part of 
the Legislature of this country, or to hold any of the great executive 
offices of the Government, from that moment the sun of Great Brit- 
ain would set." 

I feel, while I write, as if I saw the venerable man leave the wool- 
sack, advance a few steps toward the center of the House, and utter 
the emphatic warning. He held up his hand, clinched, but with one 
finger protruded. It was the peroration of an argumentative speech. 

* He writes thus of himself: " He himself had been one of the lower classes. 
He gloried in the fact ; and it was noble and delightful to know that the humblest 
man in the realm might, by a life of industry, propriety, and good moral and re- 
ligious conduct, rise to eminence. All could not become eminent in public life — 
that was impossible — but every man might arrive at honor, independence, and 
competence." 



LORD ELDON. gj 

When the sentence was said, he returned calmly and deliberately to 
his seat, and seemed as if he had discharged a last duty. But not 
long afterward, he was present as a Peer when the Duke of Norfolk 
and the Roman Catholic lords took their seats as members of the 
House, qualified to sit, and speak, and vote upon any subject under 
consideration of the Legislature.* I could easily read (for I was 
present on that memorable and impressive occasion) in the counte- 
nance of the old man, the humiliation he endured, and the agony he 
suffered, for he as fully believed that, for hereafter, the sun of Great 
Britain had set as that the noblemen before him were " not shadows, 
but substantial things." 

Lord Campbell is " charitable enough " to believe that his doubts 
were generally " white lies " ; but Lord Campbell was uncharitable 
enough to disbelieve any good, and to give credit to any evil. He 
could not — or at all events did not — comprehend the conscientious 
" scrupulosity " of Lord Eldon. Yet in many ways the one accorded 
justice to the other, sustaining the belief (very limited " equity ") 
that " the Court of Chancery, under Lord Eldon's superintendence, 
was not a clog and a burthen upon the rank, wealth, and industry of 
the country." 

The good old Earl was fond of his jokes ; but they were never 
delivered, either in or out of court, at the expense of others. They 
were such as this — written to a personal friend — " I can not to-day 
give you the preferment for which you ask. Turn over." On the 
other side of the sheet was written, " I gave it to you yesterday." 
And such as this : Basil Montagu was introducing many anecdotes 
into a speech when addressing the Chancellor, who thus commented : 
" Mr. Montagu, your structure appears to be composed of so many 
stories that I am afraid we shall never get to the top of it." 

He died the 13th January, 1838, in his eighty-seventh year, pre- 
serving and using his rare faculties to the last, personally active up 
to the close of his long life. His elder brother, Lord Stowell, reached 
his ninety-first year. The good Lord Eldon had a strong remem- 
brance of favors conferred, and a short memory for injuries endured ; 
his piety was fervent, though unostentatious ; his home affections 
were strong ; generous he was to all competitors, as much so when a 
young and struggling barrister as when seated on the woolsack ; 
alike suave in temper and stern of purpose. 

I am full of joy while I write this tribute to the memory of a great 
and good man. I can not conclude it better than by quoting a pas- 
sage from a letter written by him to his daughter in 1825 : " I shall 

* Parliament, on the motion of Mr. Canning, in 1822, had resolved, though by a 
narrow majority of five in a full House, " the restoration of Catholic peers to the 
rights of sitting and voting in the House of Lords " ; and though subsequently re- 
jected by the Upper House by a majority of forty-two, the thin edge of the wedge 
was introduced, and it became a national conviction that Roman Catholic Emanci- 
pation could not be much longer postponed. 



98 THE DUKE OF YORK. 

do what I think right ; a maxim I have endeavored in past life to 
make the rule of my conduct, and trust the consequences to God ! " 

The Duke of York. — I heard his Royal Highness the Duke of 
York make his famous speech against Catholic Emancipation,* in 
1825 : when he referred to the Coronation Oath, and protested that 
he would never give his assent to the admission of Roman Catholics 
into Parliament, in whatever position he might be placed (he was 
then heir-presumptive to the Crown) — " So help me God ! " 

The Duke will be remembered as a portly man, good of form 
(though over-stout), and handsome of features. 

He spoke from the Opposition side of the House, but advanced 
to its center close to the bar ; seemed " flustered " and excited, as if 
conscious of the weight of words that would have closed the door 
against not only conciliation, but wisdom, justice, and mercy. The 
adjuration (for such it was) was received in ominous silence ; there 
were no cheers as the heir to the throne resumed his seat. A few of 
the Peers approached him when the House broke up — that was all. 
No doubt the declaration had been expected by some of them, but 
there seemed evidence rather of sorrow than of satisfaction ; more 
of fear than of joy ; certainly there was nothing like applause. Prob- 
ably, if I had been nearer to the woolsack, I should have noticed a 
shudder pass through the major part of that august assembly. 

The Duke of York did not live to witness the triumph of the 
cause he had condemned and execrated ; but he foresaw it. The 
sentence, " So help me God ! " was echoed again and again through- 
out Ireland ; and aided rather than impeded the cause it was meant 
to crush. 

Nearly sixty years have passed since I heard that memorable 
speech : it may be well to transcribe and print some passages from 
it : 

" It was an attempt to make a total change in the fundamental principle 
of the constitution, and to strike at the very root of its existence. . . . Their 
lordships were required to surrender every principle of the constitution, and 
deliver us up, bound hand and foot, to the mercy and generosity of the Ro- 
man Catholics, without any assurance even that they would be satisfied with 
such fearful concessions. . . . He wished to ask whether their lordships had 
considered the situation in which they might place the King, or whether they 
recollected the oath his Majesty had taken at the altar to his people upon his 
coronation. He begged to read the words of that oath : ' I will, to the 
utmost of my power, maintain the laws of God, the true profession of the 

* The speech of his Royal Highness found, at that time, a responsive echo 
throughout the kingdom ; it was printed in letters of gold and exposed for sale in 
the shops of all stationers ; it was (in very large type) posted on the walls of the Me- 
tropolis and the provinces, and the sentiments it expressed were proclaimed to be 
those of the King, George IV ; indeed, it was boldly stated that they were dictated 
by his Majesty for delivery by his brother in the House of Peers. 



SIX XOBEXT PEEL. oo 

Gospel, and the Protestant reformed religion established by law ; and I will 
preserve unto the bishops and clergy of this realm, and to the churches com- 
mitted to their charge, all such rights and privileges as by law do or shall ap- 
pertain to them or any of them.' . . . These were the principles which he 
had imbibed from his earliest youth ; to the justice of which he had sub- 
scribed, after serious consideration, when he attained more matured years ; 
and these were the principles to which he would adhere, and which he would 
maintain and act up to, to the latest moment of his existence, whatever might 
be his situation of life. So help me God ! " * 

After his death, Moore wrote one of the most powerful of his 
poems, " The Irish Slave " ; but the personal influence of the royal 
dead swayed the muse of the poet : " His was the error of head, not 
heart," I copy a verse : 

" He had pledged a hate unto me and mine, 

He had left to the future nor hope nor choice, 
But sealed that hate with a name Divine, 

And he now was dead and — I couldn't rejoice. 

Sir Robert Peel. — I write the name of Sir Robert Peel with 
respect approaching homage. It is, I think, that of the wisest states- 
man who has ever ruled the destinies of these kingdoms ; that is to 
say, a minister of whose acts posterity would have repealed the few- 
est ; from whose printed speeches the fewest sentences would have 
to be erased ; and who might supply for all time an example of pru- 
dence, forethought, temper, loyalty, and true patriotism. Although 
I have so very often seen and heard him, and might, I think, picture 
him with accuracy, I prefer, to any I can give, his portrait by Lord 
Dalling : 

" He was tall and powerfully built ; his body somewhat bulky for his 
limbs, his head small and well formed, his features regular. His counte- 
nance was not what would be generally called expressive, but it was capable 
of taking the expression he wished to give it ; humor, sarcasm, persuasion, 
and command being its alternate characteristics. The character of the man 
was seen more, however, in the whole person than in the face. He did not 
stoop, but he leaned rather forward ; his mode of walking was peculiar, and 
rather like that of a cat, but that of a cat that was well acquainted with the 
ground it was moving over. The step showed no doubt or apprehension, it 
could hardly be called stealthy ; but it glided on, firmly and cautiously, with- 
out haste, swagger, or unevenness, and as he quietly walked from the bar to 
his seat he looked round him, as if scanning the assembly, and when anything 
particular was expected, sat down with an air of preparation for the coming 
contest. 

" The oftener you heard him speak, the more his speaking gained upon 
you. Addressing the House several times in the night on various subjects, 

* The speech was delivered in the House of Lords on Monday, April 5, 1825, 
on the occasion of presenting the petition of the Dean and Canons of Windsor, 
" praying that no further concessions should be made to the Roman Catholics." 
The Duke died on the 3d January, 1827. 



100 SIR ROBERT PEEL. 

he always seemed to know more than any one else did about each of them, 
and to convey to you the idea that he thought he did so. His language was 
not usually striking, but it was always singularly correct, and gathered force 
with the development of his argument. He never seemed occupied with him- 
self. His effort was evidently directed to convince you, not that he was elo- 
quent, but that he was right. When the subject suited it, he would be 
witty, and with a look and a few words he could most effectively convey con- 
tempt. He could reply also with great spirit to an attack, but he was rarely 
aggressive." 

It was a mournful day — the 29th of June, 1850 — for all that ap- 
pertains to Great Britain, when, riding slowly up Constitution Hill, 
the horse stumbled, and the then Premier was thrown to the ground. 
On the 2d of July, 1850, he died. There was universal mourning 
throughout Great Britain at the statesman's death, at the compara- 
tively early age of sixty-three. All parties joined in grief : many old 
and renowned statesmen — among them, it is said, the Iron Duke — 
wept when they heard the fatal news ; a whole " public " tendered 
sympathy. An offered peerage to his widow was declined. She 
would hold no other rank than that she derived from her husband. 
To all humankind it was, what Palmerston described it, "a great 
calamity." 

The purity of his motives as a minister of the Crown was rarely 
doubted while he lived, and is not questioned now that he has long 
been dead ; while in all the relations of private life he was in every 
sense irreproachable and estimable. Few men have had a higher 
and finer testimonial to their public worth than had Peel, when, on 
the 1 2th of May, 1838, he received an invitation from three hundred 
and thirteen Conservative members of the House of Commons to a 
public dinner, three hundred being actually present to testify " their 
full, unanimous, and enthusiastic approbation of his conduct in Par- 
liament and elsewhere." 

It was always a pleasure to hear him speak. His voice was much 
under control, easily modulated, but as easily raised ; and, although 
not often impassioned, he was occasionally fierce. Yet he was al- 
ways governed by the " decorous," and seemed incapable of ungen- 
erous assault upon an adversary, although often goaded to the quick. 
As an orator his place is in the second rank. He was a fluent 
speaker, and his manner was always impressive — somewhat over- 
eager to convince, as if he distrusted either his audience or himself. 
He was a singularly clear-headed man of business, and business de- 
tails he ever brought within compass of the least informed of his 
hearers in the House. There was generally an implied comment, 
" If Sir Robert says it is so, it must be so," implying confidence in 
the soundness of his judgment and his pure integrity. No doubt he 
was " inconsistent," notoriously so as to Free Trade, the Corn Laws, 
and Catholic Emancipation ; but he pleaded guilty, if such a term 
can be applied, to the necessity for changes that had not been fore- 



S/R ROBERT PEEL. I0I 

seen — of confessing that he was wiser to-day than he had been yes- 
terday.* 

My own memory of Peel tallies with the portrait as drawn by 
Lord Dalling. I picture him as stately of person, yet by no means 
aristocratic ; deliberate, though not formal ; careful as to dress (he 
usually wore a white waistcoat in the House), but the very opposite 
of a fop.f Of strong health and vigorous constitution ; always ready 
with an abundant command of words, but never either scornful or 
flippant in word, look, or manner ; an adversary who in any contest 
seemed of right to claim respect ; always prepared to answer an as- 
sailant ; and never seemingly unable to explain ; often animated, 
and always steadfast in debate ; especially argumentative, and appar- 
ently reasoning from conviction, whether as regarded a turnpike- 
road bill, or a threat of war in Europe. To opponents he was 
rarely discourteous. There was certainly nothing about him sug- 
gestive of chivalry ; but there was never an attempt to gain by irri- 
tation. 

In fact, Sir Robert Peel ever seemed desirous to impress on his 
hearers only that which he himself believed to be true ; and to do so 
without equivocation or circumlocution, taking the shortest and most 
direct path to conviction, and seldom staying to gather flowers on 
the way. 

It is no wonder that in his various high offices, and especially 
while so long Prime Minister, he should have had a resolute and 
devoted " following " ; that, for a space, the term " Peelite " was 
the shibboleth of a party almost as definite as that of Whig and 
Tory. 

Specially honored by men of letters be the name of Sir Robert 
Peel — great statesman and good man. Let Science, Art, and Letters 
consecrate his memory ! It was he who whispered " peace " to Fe- 
licia Hemans, dying ; he it was who enabled great Wordsworth to woo 
Nature undisturbed, among the hills and dells, and rivers and streams 
of Westmoreland ; he who lightened the desk-labor of the Quaker- 
poet, Bernard Barton ; he who upheld the tottering steps and made 
tranquillity take the place of terror in the overtaxed brain of Robert 
Southey ; from him came the sunshine to the shady place in the 
home of James Montgomery ; it was his hand that opened the sick- 
room shutters, and let in the light of hope and Heaven to the death- 
bed of Thomas Hood ; nay, he might have heard an echo of the 
" God bless him ! " murmured, when in the death-throe, by unhappy 
Maginn. 

* Among the good things said by O'Connell this was one : " Inconsistency is 
merely an admission that I am wiser to-day than I was yesterday." I may not quote 
the exact words, but I do the sense of them. 

\ It was Guizot who said of him, " He was dignified without elegance." 



102 LORD LYNDHURST. 

The present generation will, I think, be willing to admit his esti- 
mate of the sacrifices he made when proclaimed by some of his polit- 
ical opponents a renegade. 

The memorable words were written by him soon after his change 
not of opinions but of policy — in 1829 : 

" I can with truth affirm, as I do solemnly affirm, in the presence 
of Almighty God, ' to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, 
and from whom no secrets are hid,' that in advising and promoting 
the measures of 1829, I was swayed by no fear except the fear of 
public calamity, and that I acted throughout from a deep conviction 
that those measures were not only conducive to the general welfare, 
but that they had become imperatively necessary in order to avert 
from interests which had a special claim upon my support — the inter- 
ests of the Church and of institutions connected with the Church — 
an imminent and increasing danger. 

" It may be that I was unconsciously influenced by motives less 
perfectly pure and disinterested, by the secret satisfaction of being — 

" ' . . . when the waves went high, 
A daring pilot in extremity.' 

But at any rate it was no ignoble ambition which prompted me to 
bear the brunt of a desperate conflict, and at the same time to sub- 
mit to the sacrifice of everything dear to a public man, excepting the 
approval of his own conscience and the hope of ultimate justice." 

When Sydney Smith, in the autumn of his days, was taunted with 
no longer supporting certain extreme opinions which he had ad- 
vanced in his youth, he replied that he was no more ashamed of 
having held those opinions, and of having got over them, than he 
was of having had the chicken-pox. "In 1837, when Southey had 
become a prosperous gentleman, and when he had long been the 
stanchest of Tories — when he was in receipt of a handsome pension 
from the Crown, and had been offered a baronetcy by Sir Robert 
Peel — he did not scruple to include ' Wat Tyler ' among his collected 
poetical works, calmly stating that he was no more ashamed of hav- 
ing been a Republican than of having been a boy, and backing up 
his procedure with a quotation from St. Augustine." 

Lord Lyndhurst. — I remember John Singleton Copley, Baron 
Lyndhurst, as Campbell describes him, "tall, erect, and gracefully 
proportioned." I saw him when his life was closing, when his years 
numbered fourscore years and ten ; and found that he had carried 
into extreme old age the qualities that made him conspicuous in his 
early manhood. 

A picture very interesting to him, as painted by his father, was 
engraved, from the Royal Gallery, for the Art Journal. Lyndhurst 
had expressed a wish to procure a copy, and it was my privilege to 
take him one. He received me in his library with courtesy approach- 



LORD LYNDHURST. 103 

ing graciousness ; conversed freely on some Art subjects, and made 
judicious comments on the engraving I submitted to him. He 
seemed by no means weighed down by years ; and, if I had not 
known his age, I should have guessed him to be not over sixty. 

Lord Campbell, so long his associate, his colleague at the bar, 
his successor, for a time, as Chancellor and Speaker of the House of 
Peers, his rival often, but his inferior always, wrote his " Life," and 
illustrated the expressive saying, " Save me from my friends ! " It 
was said of his " Lives of the Chancellors " that he added " a new 
sting to death " ; and of the writer Brougham said, " He has a pre- 
scriptive right to tell lies of all Chancellors, living or dead." He con- 
fesses to " a hankering kindness for Lyndhurst with all his faults," 
and professes to have " done his best for him, as far as his conscience 
would permit." In that spirit Campbell entered on his task ; but 
his portrait is no more faithful to the original than a theatrical star 
in pantomime is to the veritable light that gives glory to an evening 
sky. Lord Lyndhurst supplies another proof that hard work does not 
shorten life. He was born in 1772, and died in 1863, at the " ripe " 
age of ninety-two. In 1794 he was admitted a member of the Hon- 
orable Society of Lincoln's Inn. Thus he might have witnessed the 
Lord George Gordon riots, and have stood under the scaffold when 
the ra-ira was bellowed by female fiends trampling in the blood of 
Marie Antoinette ; yet those who are hardly men in years may have 
walked with him down Bond Street, and maidens barely out of their 
teens have been danced upon his knee. He might have seen Chat- 
ham dying among his peers in the House, and heard Burke deplore 
the decadence of chivalry ; patted on the head, and given words of 
warning and encouragement to, the author of " English Bards and 
Scotch Reviewers," and have seen James Watt pondering over the 
power that moved the cover of a tea-kettle.* 

He was four times Lord High Chancellor of England. His 
mother lived to see him " in his robes " ; and he died in the house — 
5 George Street, Hanover Square — where his father had pursued 
his calling as an artist : a member of the Royal Academy contem- 
porary with Sir Joshua Reynolds. 

How very close to a far-off history we may be brought by a 
single link ! A treasure of some considerable value was lost to the 
world in the sea-sunk notes of Copley regarding his tour through the 
United States (in 1803), where he traveled for several weeks in the 

* Lord Campbell, in his Life of Lord Lyndhurst, says : " In his person he was 
tall, erect, and gracefully proportioned. His features were strongly marked, and 
his whole countenance well-chiseled, with some fine lines of thought in it — never- 
thelesss, occasionally with a sinister smile of great cunning and some malignity, 
which obtained for him the sobriquet of Mephistopheles." He was eighty-eight years 
old (in i860) when he made his last speech in the House of Peers : it was on the 
Bill for the repeal of the paper duty. 



104 



LORD LYNDHURST. 



company of Louis Philippe. They would have been curious read- 
ing — the thoughts of the great Chancellor and of the afterward Citi- 
zen-King. 

The unfortunate speech in which Lyndhurst protested against 
granting concessions to Roman Catholics, on the ground that they 
were " aliens in blood, religion, and nationality," laid him open to 
the telling rebuke that he was himself more of an alien than the 
people he cried down, having been born in Boston (United States). 
O'Connell smote him and spared not, describing the assailant of 
Irish Catholics as " himself an alien, and liable to be reclaimed as a 
refugee Yankee." Moreover, not only was Lyndhurst an alien by 
birth (if we can so style one who was born a British subject), but he 
had Irish blood in his veins : his grandmother was an Irishwoman. 
To the overpowering outburst of Sheil I shall elsewhere allude. It 
was one of the great Chancellor's few mistakes ; but it was no more 
than that. He paid dearly for it. Had he lived much longer he 
would have found bands of " United " Irishmen, eagerly avowing 
that they are aliens," proud of the distinction, which they regard 
as a glory and not a reproach.* 

What would he have said, and what would have been Sheil's in- 
dignant comment, if, in 1881, fifty years after the Catholic Relief 
Bill had passed — and not only " liberty," but " equality " had become 
the conceded rights of the weaker party — they had read a solemn 
document issued under the sanction of fifteen hundred delegates of 
the Irish people, describing the connection between England and 
Ireland as " a detestable system of alien rule " ? 

He was in his eighty-eighth year when he spoke for an hour in the 
House of Lords, and, as Campbell writes, " poured forth eloquent 
strains." He was but one of four great lawyers — Eldon, Brougham, 
Campbell, Lyndhurst, whose ages far surpassed that to which King 
David limits human life — threescore years and ten ; and whose lives 
subsequently were not as the Psalmist anticipates them — full of 
suffering and sorrow : these four grand examples, who 

" Scorned delights, and lived laborious days," 

were usefully occupied to the last — valuable proofs that hard work 
does not kill, though sloth often does. Thus wrote Lord Brougham : 
" My grandmother was born in Queen Anne's reign ; so that I 
have conversed with a person who was alive one hundred and eighty 
years ago, and who might have heard her relative, who lived to the 

* Not only in public speeches, but in published documents, the British Parlia- 
ment is described as "an alien senate " ; that the Irish are "aliens " is admitted 
as a grave boast. The ghost of Richard Sheil would shrink (if a ghost can shrink) 
at the proud avowal that they covet and desire to be so considered. 



LORD BROUGHAM. 105 

age of one hundred and six, speak of events that happened in Queen 
Elizabeth's reign." 

It is matter for regret that no " Life " of Lord Lyndhurst has 
been published. That evil is not to endure "for long." It is an- 
nounced that — supplied with ample material by Lady Lyndhurst — 
the duty is about to be discharged by Sir Theodore Martin. Surely 
the task could not have been confided to better hands. 

Lord Brougham. — The greatest of all the great men, who have 
been at once renowned at the bar and famous in the House of Com- 
mons, was undoubtedly Lord Brougham. For the larger part of 
half a century he was before the world in many ways, and always in 
the front. What a contrast he was to his great opponent, George 
Canning ! All that made Canning attractive Brougham lacked — so 
far as regards the outer man. Careless to a blamable extent of 
personal appearance, his clothes hung loosely about him, as if his 
tailor, when he made them, had neglected to take his measure. His 
action was the reverse of graceful ; his features coarse and somewhat 
awry, the well-remembered twitching of the nose giving to them 
rather a repulsive character ; the eyes were not expressive, except 
when animated, and then they rather reminded one of the vulture 
than the eagle — sly in their fierceness and little indicating the 
strength of expression so paramount in his flexible and powerful 
voice. It was not the eye of the Ancient Mariner that compelled 
the bystander to listen ; yet Brougham never failed to do so — being 
a man whose sway was instinctively irresistible. Slightly tinged at 
all times with Scottish accent, his voice was broad, strong, flexible, 
vigorous, and mentally healthful — the very opposite to that of his 
great ally, " silver-tongued Denman," who, moreover, had the per- 
sonal grace in which Brougham was so defective. Brougham's great- 
est triumphs were before my time ; but in 1823, perhaps, he was in 
his zenith, so far as Parliament was concerned, for when he became 
a peer and Lord High Chancellor his sun was setting ; there was a 
cloud of glory all about him even then, but it was the cloud that 
heralded a coming night. 

It was foreseen that Brougham the Lord would be the inferior of 
Brougham the Commoner. So it was undoubtedly. In the House 
of Peers he was never at home. I can only liken him there to a 
man who wears another man's clothes that do not fit him. His mo- 
tions were uneasy at best, sometimes so much so that he appeared 
to be "seated on a hot griddle." He fidgeted from side to side, 
rose without dignity, and ungracefully resumed his seat — starting up 
and flopping down. 

It was a wonderfully full life : the harvest would demand large 
barns in which to garner it. His speeches in Parliament were so 
numerous as to number at least one for every day while the session 



106 LORD BROUGHAM. 

lasted. It was sometimes so amusing as to make the whole House 
smile in expectation, when Canning sat looking at Brougham and 
Brougham sat looking at Canning — each eager that the one opposite 
should first address the House and give to the other the advantage 
of a reply. It was usually the last, and not the first, blow that told.* 

So much has been said and written concerning Brougham, and I 
could say so little that is new, that I make my recollection of him 
brief. As the world knows, he left " Memoirs of his Life and Times " 
(which his brother edited). Its concluding passage is this : " Let it 
be recollected that I began this attempt after I was eighty-three 
years of age, with enfeebled intellect, failing memory, and but slight 
materials by me. Above all, that there was not left one single friend 
or associate of my earlier days whose recollections might have aided 
mine. All are dead ! I alone survive of those who had acted in the 
scenes I have here faintly endeavored to retrace." 

[I utter all these words and apply them to myself : I am as old 
as he was when he wrote them.] 

After a life of marvelous activity, every hour of which was busy, 
except the hours he gave to sleep, he retired, as far as it was possible 
for him to do, from all employment except that of recording the 
events and incidents of his long life — a work singularly poor com- 
pared with what it was expected to have been — and died at Cannes 
in 1868, having lived fourscore years and ten : another proof that 
what is called " hard " labor — labor arduous and continuous — does 
not shorten life. 

Perhaps no man of his time worked harder than did Henry 
Brougham. I have often seen him active in the King's Bench all 
the morning, conducting a case with much energy, and apparent re- 
solve that nothing should deprive him of a verdict — as if his honor 
depended on the issue — and have again beheld him at night deliver- 
ing from his place in the House an oration that electrified his audi- 
ence of legislators. During the interval between leaving the courts 
at Westminster and entering the House of Commons, he had at- 
tended some meeting to speak, or headed some deputation, or taken 
the chair at a public dinner, or labored on some committee, taking — 
it seemed to lookers-on — no rest ; while the products of his pen can 
only be described by one word — they were prodigious. 

It would, however, be unpardonable to pass over, without a part- 
ing tribute of applause, his labors in the glorious cause of education 
and mental improvement. To his matchless energy, his daring con- 
ception, and determined perseverance, is that cause most signally in- 
debted. The angry disputes of politics perish and are forgotten, the 

* " He was accustomed to take his seat near the Speaker's end of the principal 
Opposition bench, clad in old and ill-made garments of black, his arms folded, his 
hat pulled down over his eyes, as if it were his object to represent deep and dark 
reflection as well as the borough of Winchester." — New Monthly, 1S30. 



LORD BROUGHAM. 



107 



voice of the orator is heard no more, and the thousands of hearts 
that beat with the inspiration of his eloquence are still as the turf 
beneath which they sleep ; but even then will our children and our 
children's children be drinking of that mighty fount of knowledge 
which Brougham has done so much to set free for all humankind, 
while myriads of instructed men will venerate his name. When we 
think of these things we forget the fierce and intemperate politician : 
we remember only the man to whom intellectual ability was the surest 
passport for attention, who, while he is all scorn to dunces, however 
high their station, is all humility to knowledge, however lowly the 
garb that clothes it. 

His famous speech on law reform is that of which I retain the 
most vivid remembrance. I reported part of it ; indeed, it gave the 
labor of a night to every reporter on the establishment, for it lasted 
six hours. The peroration was, I think, one of the grandest things 
on record. His appeal to George IV, that " his boast might be 
loftier than that of Augustus — that he found Rome of brick and left 
it of marble " — produced a murmur of applause in the House that 
was far more recompensing than would have been the loudest cheer. 
It is undoubtedly one of the finest passages in the English language. 
I quote it here : 

" It was the boast of Augustus, it formed part of the luster in which the 
perfidies of his earlier years were lost — that he found Rome of brick and left 
it of marble ; a praise not unworthy a great prince, and to which the present 
reign is not without claims. But how much nobler will be our Sovereign's 
boast, when he shall have it to say, he found law dear and left it cheap ; found 
it a sealed book, and left it a living letter; found it the patrimony of the rich, 
left it the inheritance of the poor — found it the two-edged sword of craft and 
oppression, left it the staff of honesty and the shield of innocence ! " 

Lord Brougham was born in 1778, in St. Andrew Square, Edin- 
burgh. His father was of aristocratic descent, a native of Westmore- 
land, who had married a young Scottish lady. Brougham is gener- 
ally claimed as a Scotchman, one of the thousand illustrious men to 
whom Scotland has given birth. As with nearly all great men, he 
owed much to his mother, who lived to see him in the highest posi- 
tion it was possible for him to attain. As soon as possible after 
he assumed the robes as Lord High Chancellor he journeyed to 
Brougham Hall * to visit that venerable mother, knelt at her feet to 
ask a blessing, and heard her words, " God Almighty bless you, my 
son ! " 

* In 1845 I had the honor to be a guest at Brougham Hall. Unfortunately, 
Lord Brougham was away — at Cannes ; but I enjoyed the hospitality of his brother, 
William Brougham, and received from him great kindness and much information. 
My object was to write concerning Brougham Hall for a work I edited — " The 
Baronial Halls of England," the artists who produced the drawings and wood en- 
gravings being J. D. Harding, William Muller, Nash, F. W. Fairholt, and others. 



108 LORD PALMERS TON. 

In 1839, it was stated in all the newspapers (excepting the Times), 
and universally credited, that he had been killed by an accident. It 
was a current belief that the statement was made on the authority of 
the noble and learned lord himself, who desired to ascertain, before- 
hand, what posterity would say of him. The wish was gratified, 
though the results could not have been entirely to his satisfaction. 
From the " Obituary " in the Morning Chronicle I extract the follow- 
ing passage ; it is to my mind a just estimate of his character ; it 
says of him all I could wish to say : " In variety of attainments, fa- 
cility of expression, energy of purpose, in the grandeur of forensic 
eloquence, in the declamation that renders a debate impressive to 
his audience and the sarcasm that renders him most formidable to an 
opponent, in the untiring continuance of intellectual labors, in the 
fervent championship of many great objects of national philanthropy 
and improvement — Lord Brougham stood prominent among all his 
political compeers. He well earned — by long toil, splendid effort, 
and gradual ascent — the elevation to which he attained : not that 
merely of rank and station, but of celebrity and influence." 

That was his epitaph — recorded before he was dead. Let it 
stand now that he is in his grave, for of a surety his works do follow 
him ; and if there be (as there must be) consciousness and memory 
in the Hereafter, Henry Lord Brougham must know that a large debt 
is owing to him by all humankind. 

Lord Palmerston. — No doubt the man most conspicuous, if 
not most renowned, among statesmen of the period was Lord Palm- 
erston — an Irishman who would rather not have been an Irishman ; 
from whom his country obtained no affection and small help. He 
very rarely visited Ireland between his boyhood and his death ; had 
little sympathy with her sufferings ; contributed nothing to her ma- 
terial progress ; and died as he had lived, the worst of all enemies — 
a cold, indifferent, and unsympathizing friend. The three ponderous 
volumes, edited (in a way) by Lord Dalling, contain no single sen- 
tence to show that at any time he took the slightest interest in Ire- 
land — either in her physical, social, moral, or intellectual improve- 
ment. Yet his means were enormous, and his opportunities innu- 
merable of serving the country of his ancestry. In one place, 
indeed, he is styled "an eminent Englishman." Strange, Lord 
Dalling does not tell us where he was born, but merely informs us 
that he was the son of the second viscount and a " Miss Mee, the 
daughter of a respectable Dublin tradesman, into whose house, in 
consequence of a fall from his horse, the peer had been carried." 

Palmerstown, or Palmerston, is a village four miles west of Dub- 
lin, in Dublin County. Several mansions grace the locality, the 
principal of which is the seat of the Earl of Donoughmore, who, 
however, is not a resident. The property there was acquired in 1666 



LORD PALMERSTON. IO g 

by Sir John Temple,* who was born in Ireland in 1600 ; his father 
was Provost of Trinity College. Sir John held several high offices, 
one of them being the Mastership of the Rolls, and one of his sons 
was Speaker of the Irish House of Commons. From him Lord Palm- 
erston was lineally descended. The title was created in 1722, the 
Prime Minister being the third Viscount ; he died leaving no issue, 
and the title became extinct. Thus Lord Palmerston was not only 
of Irish, but of illustrious Irish, descent ; more than two hundred 
years before his birth his family obtained renown in Ireland ; and of 
the whole of his Irish progenitors he might have been proud. In all 
ways, except in the accident of birth, he is to be regarded as an 
Irishman ; unfortunately for his country, he considered that fact a 
misfortune and not a distinction, and so far as Ireland is concerned, 
it may be said of him with greater truth than it was said of the Duke 
of Wellington, he was an Irishman " whom fame unwillingly shines 
upon." 

There is no patriotism among the better classes of the Irish. The 
reason is plain. Ireland has been for centuries divided into two par- 
ties, the English-Irish and the Irish-Irish ; the one hating the other, 
and treating the other as his inevitable and irreconcilable enemy. So 
it has always been — the conqueror and the conquered ! There has 
been no ground on which both may stand and feel proud of their 
common country. Thus, the heroic defense of Londonderry is 
to the one a glory, to the other a shame. So it is of the siege of 
Limerick, unsurpassed in the annals of bravery and endurance. To 
recall either to memory is to flatter or to insult. Thus a very large 
number of the great men of whom Ireland has been so fertile, have, 
to say the least, wished they had not been Irish — born or bred. The 
poets, indeed, have written much of an opposite character ; but many 
of the " lauders of Erin " have become absentees when circumstances 
enabled them to be so ; and statesmen — her sons — have done little 
or nothing to elevate her character, promote her interests, and ex- 
tend her fame. Her benefactors for the most part have been Eng- 
lish ; few great improvements in her condition have been introduced, 
fostered, and strengthened, from any home source. I may have to 
treat this subject more in extenso when I write of Ireland sixty years 
ago. I allude to it here to sustain the assertion that Lord Palmer- 

* Though not the founder of the family — for the Lords Temple were renowned 
long before his birth — the direct ancestor was Sir John Temple, born in Ireland in 
1600, whose father was a Fellow and afterward Provost of Trinity College, who 
was knighted in 1628 ; and was Master of the Rolls in 1640. He received for 
his services large grants in the counties of Dublin and Carlow. Two of his sons, 
born in England, rose to eminence — Sir William Temple, the statesman, and 
friend and patron of Swift ; and Sir John, Speaker of the Irish House of Commons, 
from whom the Premier, Lord Palmerston, was lineally descended. The Premier 
was born at Broadlands on the 20th October, 1784 ; and there he died on 18th Oc- 
tober, 1865. 



HO LORD PALMERSTON. 

ston was an Irishman who would rather not have been an Irishman. 
"Ireland gave me breath," said the painter Barry; "but Ireland 
never would have given me bread." 

The minister was born on the 20th of October, 1784, and died 
on the 18th of October, 1865. He succeeded his father in 1802, and, 
though very young, vainly sought to enter Parliament as represent- 
ative for Cambridge University in 1806. His power was mainly 
derived from confidence in himself, indifference to any opinions that 
were not his, a low estimate of regal rights on the one hand and 
national rights on the other. I can but speak of Lord Palmerston 
according to the means I have of judging : of the inner man I know 
nothing ; he may have been a saint in private life for aught I know ; 
but he seemed to on-lookers one whose character was formed in 
accordance with the recipe for the creation of greatness — " a good 
digestion and a cold heart." He certainly gave the impression that 
his human sympathies were small. Perhaps few British ministers 
have ever lived who seemed to hold office more on the " You can't 
do without me " principle than on any ground of esteem, regard, affec- 
tion, or belief that his counsel was in any degree calculated to pro- 
mote the interests and extend the glory of his country. 

It is seemingly a marvel that a man whom few respected and 
fewer loved, who had received as the reward of his labor little of the 
homage and less of the affection that make the best wages of service, 
should have been during so many years a foremost servant of the 
state — Home Secretary, Foreign Minister, and Prime Minister. 

Barely twenty years have passed since he died — and died in har- 
ness. Yet Viscount Palmerston seems to be as much forgotten as if 
he had never lived ; he has not left his mark on the age ; there is no 
one measure with which he is identified. Nor will those who remem- 
ber him in the House of Commons, as so long its leader, recall him 
to memory with either pleasure or pride. He never either concili- 
ated or extorted confidence ; never seemed to be the advocate of 
truth because it was truth ; never, indeed, possessed the mighty 
power that arises from earnest conviction, and so conveys the im- 
pression — 

"... this rock shall fly 
From its firm base as soon as I." 

But his resolution, strong as it was, did not seem to be the result 
of conviction. He was a dandy in dress, and a fop in manners ; in- 
deed, he had obtained the sobriquet of " Cupid." He had an air 
of insincerity that forbade belief of his earnestness and truth as re- 
garded any measure he advocated or opposed. No doubt he had 
numerous chances of handing down his name to posterity as a bene- 
factor of his kind. If not unrecorded, it is unremembered ; associ- 
ated with no great object or grand purpose ; although he lived 



WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. m 

through the first half of the nineteenth century, and was in " high 
office " nearly the whole of that time, when events that concerned 
the half of humankind were daily incidents. 

At the Exhibition of 185 1 I stood by his side as he was leaving. 
The cheers of a crowd greeted him. Some one exclaimed, " God 
bless you, Palmerston, may you live forever ! " " The first wish of 
my heart ! " he replied, with a bow and a smile. 

Palmerston is another example of vigor in old age ; of the bene- 
ficial and not deleterious effects of hard work. In 1863, being sev- 
enty-nine years old, he delivered an address as Lord Rector of the 
University of Glasgow. He was then Prime Minister. He died as 
he had lived, in harness, working to the last. On the 18th of Octo- 
ber, 1865, he was found dead, with an unfinished letter lying on the 
table before him : having been a member of every Government (with 
but two exceptions) from 1806 to 1865, having sat in sixteen Parlia- 
ments, and being elected to sit in the seventeenth. He was (as was 
undoubtedly his wish) buried in Westminster Abbey. 

No doubt he had a large if not a zealous following ; and if it 
were not easy for a government to manage with him, it was much 
harder to do without him : to encounter him in opposition was to ren- 
der a government impossible — he was hardly less loved by his allies 
than he was by his opponents. His thorough conversance with " for- 
eign affairs," his ever-readiness in reply ; his occasional outbursts of 
eloquence, rendered him an indispensable acquisition to any gov- 
ernment, whose first requirement was just such services as he alone 
could render. 

Although his collected speeches do not add much to his renown, 
here and there one drops across a passage truly eloquent, and occa- 
sionally such as may make a British subject proud that Great Britain 
had a Foreign Minister who knew how to maintain and extend the 
rights of the Crown and the People : as when he made, in 1850, his 
famous speech — defending the Russell Parliament as to the affairs 
of Greece — and concluded with that impressive passage : " As the 
Roman, in days of old, held himself free from indignity when he 
could say Civis Romanus sum, so also a British subject, in whatever 
land he may be, shall feel confident that the watchful eye and the 
strong arm of England will protect him against injustice and wrong." 

They were noble words of Sir Robert Peel, who was one of his 
opposers, " His speech made us all proud of the man who delivered 
it " — words that were echoed by the plaudits of the whole House. 

Wilberforce. — I had the honor and happiness to know William 
Wilberforce, and to visit him more than once at his residence, the 
large house that yet exists at the corner of Brompton Crescent, and 
also at Grove House, Kensington Gore. 

I have often heard him speak in the House of Commons. There 
are not many who can say so, although he did not die until 1833, 



112 WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 

living to see the dream of his boyhood — from his very infancy, in- 
deed, upward — a palpable reality. He was born in 1759, and was in 
Parliament (for Hull) in 1780. To tender homage to that great and 
good man is but to echo the sentiment of all humanity. Though of 
' sixteen descents," a " Wilberforce of Wilberforce," he made the 
name more illustrious than were those obtained at Hastings, at 
Crecy, or on any of the battle-fields of earth. And it would seem 
as if he were but midway in a glorious race, for his son, the Bishop 
of Oxford, and his son, Basil, Canon of Winchester, have achieved 
renown — the latter mainly by encountering a foe more fatal to body, 
mind, and soul than was even negro slavery — Intemperance.* 

I recall the great man as delicate in features, notwithstanding a 
somewhat strongly marked outline, and in form the opposite of pow- 
erful ; the head seemed a little " awry," and is so shown in portraits 
and the statue at Westminster Abbey. But those features spoke, and 
that form dilated, when at his work in the House of Commons. It 
was, however, undoubtedly a disadvantage to the orator, whose busi- 
ness it is to persuade rather than convince — a disadvantage his dis- 
tinguished son had not, and his grandsons have not — owing more to 
external advantages than did the illustrious and victorious combatant 
for the veritable rights of man. He was far past his prime when I 
knew him, but his voice continued clear, ringing, strong yet melo- 
dious, and his eye retained the brilliancy that indicates creative 
genius. 

He was a thorough Englishman from first to last, returning from 
several Continental tours ' better pleased with his own country than 
when he left it " — and as thoroughly a Christian gentleman. If in 
his childhood there was " a rare and pleasing character of piety," in 
later years he was convinced that " true religion is communion with 
God." It was less as a philosopher than as a patriot and a Christian 
that he fought the fight in which freedom triumphed, and it was as 
" a follower of the Cross " that he led the van in the battle that se- 
cured victory.f 

In 1787 twelve gentlemen, "all of whom but two were Quakers," 
met and resolved to put a stop to the slave-trade — resolved that sell- 
ing and buying human flesh should cease forever where the banner 

* Very recently another name is to be added to the list — that of Ernest Wilber- 
force, now Bishop of Newcastle. 

f In 1802 he thus wrote, on his birthday: "Who is there that has so many 
blessings ? Let me record some of them. Affluence, without the highest rank ; a 
good understanding and a happy temper, kind friends and a greater number than 
almost any one. Domestic happiness beyond what could have been conceived pos- 
sible ; a situation in life most honorable, and, above all, a most favorable position 
for eternity. What way soever I look I see marks of the goodness and long-suffer- 
ing of God. Oh ! that I may be more filled with gratitude ! " 

At a much later period, 1821, he wrote these words : " There would be no end 
of enumeration were I to put down all the mercies of God ! Praise the Lord, O 
my soul ! " 



WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 



113 



of Great Britain was unfurled. It was the boy David going forth to 
slay the giant of Gath. A project to cultivate meadows in the moon 
could not have promised a less productive harvest. 

[No doubt his grandson, Canon Wilberforce, has in his mind this 
beginning of the end when he is fighting with the foul demon, Drink, 
that curses our country.] 

There were guiding and assisting angels in the little parlor where 
these twelve assembled ; but help from fellow-men was out of the 
reach of hope — except to those whose trust is in Heaven. 

So far back as 1789 Wilberforce "took up" the slave-trade: 
when his " silver voice " was heard in the House of Commons de- 
scribing the wickedness of the traffic and aiding fancy by facts — pict- 
uring the horrors of " the middle passage " — receiving aid, indeed, 
from the brave, indignant oratory of Fox and the majestic eloquence 
of Pitt, yet pleading in vain to " Christian love and national honor " ; 
aided also by the poet Cowper, who in 1792 moved him onward by 
his memorable greeting in verse — 

" Enjoy what thou hast won, esteem and love 
From all the just on earth and blessed above." 

Professor Sedgwick, who left earth not very long ago, was pres- 
ent at the first debate in the House, and briefly described it. It 
seems like quoting history, for many yet remain — I am of the num- 
ber — who have conversed with the revered professor on this topic. 

It is a long skip between 1789 and 1807 : the interval may be suffi- 
ciently described in three words that so often occur in the good 
man's diary — "hard at work." Great men, and many women as 
truly great, had enlisted under his banner. It was a drawn battle 
when a motion was carried for " gradual abolition." The soldiers of 
freedom were not content : none laid aside their armor. It was 
asked, " The desolation of wretched Africa suspended ! Are all the 
complicated miseries of this wretched trade — is the work of death 
suspended ? " They did not dare go back ; they lived to conquer, 
and conquer they did. George Canning joined the ranks, and " out- 
siders " were numerous and powerful. It is said that the last letter 
John Wesley wrote was addressed to Wilberforce. It contained this 
passage, at once a prayer and a prophecy — " Go on in the name of 
God, and in the power of His might, till even American slavery, the 
vilest that ever saw the sun, shall vanish away." 

On the 23d of March, 1807, the bill for the total abolition of the 
slave-trade was passed in a House once " so fastidious as scarce to 
hear a speech about it," the number on division being, for, 283 ; 
against, 16 ! On the 25th of that month it received the Royal assent. 
" No selfish exultation disturbed the heartfelt joy " of William Wil- 
berforce : he gave thanks to God ; they were his only words of 
triumph ! 

8 



114 WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 

Was that the sole work of the great and good man ? Far from 
it. But the one dwarfs by comparison much that would have entitled 
any other statesman to lofty rank among the benefactors of human- 
kind. 

In July, 1833, the good man had, to quote the expressive words 
of St. Paul, " fallen asleep." Ah ! let imagination, based on Script- 
ure, picture his awakening — for if there be joy in heaven over a 
sinner that repenteth, what must it be when the perfected spirit joins 
the beatified ranks — whose work on earth has been pure and good 
and holy ! As one of his friends writes of him, his was " a mind per- 
petually tuned to love and grace." 

He sought no earthly reward — that soldier of the Faith ! The 
House awarded no tribute, no vote of thanks to him, as it has so 
often done to those who had slaughtered wholesale. He had saved 
the lives of millions, rescued his country from a blight — humanity 
from a curse. His payment was postponed until the " resurrection 
of the just " ; not altogether so, for he had a public funeral in West- 
minster Abbey ; more than that, the House of Commons rose and 
burst into an absolute roar of applause when Sir Samuel Romilly pro- 
claimed that from a memorable day every slave who trod British soil, 
or made his way to the deck of a British ship, became a man — -free/ 

I wonder if a negro, or a mulatto, or a creole, has ever stood and 
contemplated the statue of Wilberforce — a seated figure of stone, in 
the British Walhalla ! What measureless gratitude must expand the 
souls of freemen the descendants of slaves ! 

It is told of Addison that he sent for his step-son, Lord Warwick, 
to show him " how a Christian could die." It is sufficient to say of 
Wilberforce that his life having been a long contest to do the work 
of God for the good of man, " his end was peace " ; he " entered 
into the joy of his Lord," bequeathing a lesson — teaching by exam- 
ple — that will be of incalculable value for all time here and here- 
after. Tall and stately mansions now occupy the site of the house 
in which Wilberforce died at Kensington Gore. In 1851 the cook 
Soyer converted it into a restaurant. We can make no pilgrimage 
to the house where the good man took leave of earth, to hear the 
greeting of the Master he had served so long and so well — " Good 
and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." In that 
house I saw him more than once ; he was bowed down by labor 
rather than age ; his smile was beautiful — it is the only word I can 
use ; and his eyes sparkled, as they might have done, fifty years 
before, when the first thought of erasing from the statute-book a 
bloody, degrading, and atrocious statute dawned upon his mind. 

This memory is long : I have had strong joy in leaving for a while 
the arena of politics — recollections of great men who struggled, or 
wrangled, in " either House " — to revel in recalling the most glorious 



WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 



"5 



of the heroes who fought for and achieved, early in this century, a 
victory over sin and death, such as the poet describes when the 
archangel Michael conquered both, and with them their sustainer, 
Satan. 

Perhaps the highest compliment ever paid by one public man to 
another was this : when a speaker in the House had sought to sneer 
down Wilberforce as " the honorable and religious gentleman," the 
taunt was replied to in a strain of bitter and wrathful sarcasm— that 
a "British senate should be required to consider piety a reproach." 
When a member expressed his astonishment at the power of sarcasm, 
then — for the first time — used by Wilberforce, Romilly remarked 
that it illustrated the virtue even more than the genius of Wilber- 
force, " for who but he has ever possessed so formidable a weapon 
and never used it '?" I borrow this anecdote from Lord Brougham, 
who testifies in the highest terms to the moral, social, and intellectual 
worth of the great and truly heroic Liberator of the Slave. 

He could have commanded any amount of patronage, not only 
on account of his power in Parliament, but because he was the 
chosen and trusted friend of William Pitt ; and surely he might have 
demanded and obtained any place for himself. He had none ; he 
sought and received a far higher reward than even a British Minister 
can give for services such as few men have ever lived to render hu- 
manity. He was largely paid for them during life by the profound 
homage and tender affection of all good men and women — the re- 
ward of listening senates being to him infinitely less valuable than 
domestic love. 

On the 1 2th of April, 1833, for the last time on earth his voice 
was heard in public. " It was an affecting sight," say his sons, " to 
see the old man who had been so long the champion of this cause 
come forth once more from his retirement, and with an unquenched 
spirit, though with a weakened voice and failing body, maintain for 
the last time the cause of truth and justice." But he was not called 
away until his work was finished : he lived long enough to see his 
cherished hope accomplished, and might have quoted, probably did 
quote, this passage : 

" Lord, now lettest Thou thy servant depart in peace." 

On the 29th of July, 1833, he died, being within a month of seventy- 
four years old. 

I was present in Westminster Abbey at the burial of the body 
that had inclosed the great soul ; the mourners mourned, indeed, but 
it was, so to speak, joyful mourning. 

On his death-bed, the tidings of Emancipation were conveyed to 
him : to imagine what he must have felt is hardly within the scope 
of human intelligence. There have been commanders in ships of 
war, and chiefs on battle-fields, whose eyes brightened in death, and 



Il6 LORD MELBOURNE. 

whose lips strove to utter words of triumph when a sound of victory 
greeted their ears ; but it was mingled with the shrieks of the 
wounded and the moans of the dying. How different must have 
been the feelings of the departing conqueror when he murmured, 
" Thank God ! "—and—" died." 

Lord Melbourne. — A writer in the New Monthly Magazine 
(whose words I have several times quoted, and whom I believe to 
be Mr. W. H. Curran : the articles were published during my editor- 
ship) quotes these words of Hazlitt describing Coleridge, and applies 
them to Lord Melbourne : 

" Persons of the greatest capacity are often those who, for this reason, do 
the least ; for, surveying themselves from the highest point of view amid the 
infinite variety of the universe, their own share in it seems trifling and scarce 
worth a thought, and they prefer the contemplation of all that is, or has been, 
or can be, to the making a toil about doing what, when done, is no better 
than vanity." 

They were just as regards William Lamb, afterward Viscount 
Melbourne : he was of gentlemanly, if not of graceful, exterior ; his 
manners were polished, if not refined, and he seemed studious to 
make all persons who approached him pleased with themselves : 

" To make men self-pleased, need not be to flatter." 

He was neither eloquent nor argumentative, but he was persuasive ; 
and as Home Secretary and Prime Minister, during the earlier years 
of the reign of Queen Victoria, kept on good terms with the Sover- 
eign and the people. He always conveyed the idea that those who 
officially troubled him annoyed him, and that his truest enjoyment 
consisted in the least possible amount of work. Moreover, he had 
the reputation of being a man of pleasure — selfish pleasure, that is 
to say — regardless of what its acquisition might cost others. His 
name is associated with nothing that gave it fame ; and certainly of 
all the Prime Ministers of my time he is the one (to my thinking) the 
world would most willingly let die. 

I do no more than allude to the painful trial to which in the later 
years of his life he was subjected — a trial that involved the reputa- 
tion of one of the most beautiful and accomplished women of the 
age ; neither need I refer to the frivolous life, and frequently com- 
promising habits and character of his wife, Lady Caroline Lamb. 
There is no reason why I should dwell upon themes that are, to say 
the least, distasteful. In the case of the lady referred to, he received 
honorable acquittal from a jury of his countrymen, with the entire 
approval of the judge. The subject was town talk for a while, and 
had better be forgotten. Lord Melbourne was never on good terms 
with his wife, whose intercourse with Byron was a topic of comment 
at the time. But that Lady Caroline was more than half insane there 



SIDNEY HERBERT. IT y 

is little doubt. I have talked with a person who had read the notori- 
ous autobiography of Byron that was given to Moore, and sold by 
him to Murray for a large sum, which sum the poet returned to the 
publisher when the MS. was destroyed : that person told me it con- 
tained many frightful anecdotes concerning Lady Caroline which it 
was a shame to have written, much more to have contemplated print- 
ing for the whole world to read. 

Sidney Herbert. — In 1855-56 I had the honor to be associated 
with the Right Hon. Sidney Herbert, as one of the honorary secre- 
taries of the " Nightingale Fund." In treating that subject I may 
have more to say of him. His position as a member of Government 
was not high, but, assuredly, had he lived longer he would have been 
Prime Minister — a station and dignity for which he was eminently 
qualified by great ability, undoubted integrity, and by all the facul- 
ties that form a statesman ; to these may be added the advantages of 
lofty descent, courteous and conciliatory manners, and far more than 
pleasing appearance — resembling, indeed, in more ways than one his 
great predecessor, George Canning. 

I never pass Foley's statue of Sidney Herbert, outside the War 
Office in Pall Mall, without tendering homage to the memory of a 
man I regarded with deep respect and also with personal affection. 

I quote good old Izaak Walton's summary of the character of 
Lord Herbert of Cherbury : " He was one of the handsomest men of 
his day, of a beauty alike stately, chivalric, and intellectual. His 
person and features were cultivated by all the disciplines of a time 
when courtly manners were not insignificant, because a monarch 
mind informed the court, nor warlike customs, rude nor mechanical, 
for industrial nature had free play in the field, except as restrained 
by the laws of courtesy and honor. The steel glove became his 
hand, and the spur his heel ; neither can we fancy him out of his 
place, for any place he would have made his own." 

He seemed to me a copy, and without an atom deteriorated, of 
his renowned relative-predecessor. He lived in another age, and 
had to discharge very different duties ; but there were the same 
heroic sentiment, the same high principle, the same sympathy with 
suffering, the same stern and steady resolve to right the wrong. It 
is not too much to say that what we may have imagined of the chiv- 
alry of a past age we have witnessed in our own : a gentleman who 
added dignity to the loftiest rank, who thought it no condescension 
to be kind and courteous to the very humblest who approached him. 
To rare personal advantages he added those of large intellectual ac- 
quirements. He spoke, if not as an orator, with impressive elo- 
quence ; as a practical man of business few were his superiors ; he 
had the mind of a statesman, yet gave earnest and thoughtful care to 
all the minor details of life. His death was a public calamity. 

His is the race of whom it has been so finely said, " all the men 



n8 EARL GREY. 

were brave and all the women chaste " — of whom came " Sidney's 
sister, Pembroke's mother." 

Prime Ministers. — One after another the several Prime Minis- 
ters, and other prominent statesmen I have seen, rise before me. 
They are many, between the first and the last — between Lord Liver- 
pool and Mr. Gladstone ; between 1822 and 1883 — more than sixty 
years. Brief memories may here suffice : they have their places in 
history. Each had, as was fitting, his biographer. 

First comes the Earl of Liverpool, with hasty and undignified 
tread, his scanty hair folded over his broad forehead ; neither intel- 
lectual nor eloquent, yet filling a niche worthily, although he was but 
a pygmy compared with his predecessor and successor. 

Earl Grey was of the pure aristocracy in manner and in person. 
He is described as of pompous coldness. He was " every inch " a 
peer, and seemed as if he would rather sacrifice the British Constitu- 
tion than his Order — considering nothing gone if that were left.* 

I remember him well — " tall, graceful, and of imposing figure," 
achieving renown for " consistency and proud integrity of conduct " ; 
a man whose exact place as a statesman it would be difficult to fix ; 
who had been a reformer, when to advocate Reform was not only 
unpopular but dangerous. When a young man he, in 1793, headed 
the " Society of Friends of the People." But he had " sobered 
down " with time, and assuredly when he became Prime Minister 
had ignored many of his old opinions. Even at the time of which I 
write, Reform and Revolution were considered convertible terms ; 
and some liberal and enlightened statesmen declared not only against 
vote by ballot (of which some idlers dreamed, and of household suf- 
frage — a dream nearly as wild), but against the Reform that laid a 
destroying hand on Gatton and old Sarum ; and presumed to com- 
plain because Birmingham and Manchester were without representa- 
tives in Parliament. 

Although very slight, Earl Grey was of commanding person and 
handsome features, stately in manner, and very aristocratic in mind. 
He would have stood by his Order after the manner of the drunken 
cavalier propping with his shoulder the buttress of a cathedral : 

* " There is a moral air about the man, and a self-possession, and a deportment 
which seems to say — 

' Your grace shall pardon me, 

I am too high born to be property'd ; 

To be a second at control, 

Or useful serving-man,' 
which, aided by his tall, graceful, and imposing figure, grave though by no means 
highly intellectual features, and by his almost traditional reputation for consistency 
and proud integrity of conduct, imparts to his observations a weight which it would 
be impossible to conceive any of these noblemen in the possession of." — New 
Monthly, 1832. 



SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH. Y Ig 

" D ye, you old b , I'll stand by ye to the last ! " He was 

not an orator much believed in by several of his contemporaries ; yet 
he had stood in his place when Fox and Burke, and Sheridan and 
Canning made the Senate ring. His eloquence was far more calcu- 
lated to convince the reason than to move the heart : it was cold and 
unimpassioned. What sort of a Commoner he made I can not say, 
but he seemed to me one who could only have been at home among 
his peers. A writer in the New Monthly thus describes him : " It is 
impossible to see or hear a man on whom is more vividly impressed 
the stamp of ' noble.' ... A high and haughty, yet magnanimous 
and upright spirit breathes throughout him." 

Lord Goderich seemed a cheerful and self-satisfied British yeo- 
man : with round pleasant face, colored from labor all day in the 
sun and wind ; a courteous gentleman always, to his inferiors, no less 
than to his equals ; a man loved at home, and esteemed abroad. 
When Chancellor of the Exchequer he obtained a title — it was either 
a laudation or a sneer, according to the estimate of a speaker — 
" Prosperity Robinson," a result of the sanguine view he had taken 
of the financial condition of the country at the period. Let him keep 
it, with the respect of all parties with whom he acted, or to whom he 
was opposed. His reign as Prime Minister was brief ; and if not 
glorious, was not inglorious. 

Lord Althorp. — It was, to what was then prized as a virtue in 
the House, that Lord Althorp owed the loftiest position a British 
subject can enjoy ; for neither in mind nor in manners, nor gifts of 
speech, did he rise much above the level of a thoughtful English 
gentleman-farmer, to be consulted safely as to the management of 
flocks and herds. The confidence men felt they might place in his 
uprightness gave him the position he held as leader of the House : it 
was almost instinctively felt he was that noblest work of God — an 
honest man. 

Lord Brougham says of him : " There never was a man of real 
merit who had an opinion of himself so unaffectedly modest. With- 
out a particle of cant, he was most deeply imbued with religion, and 
this, perhaps, as well as ar^y other part of his nature, indisposed him 
to exert himself to attain the usual objects of earthly ambition. Al- 
ways undervaluing himself, he never could comprehend why he had 
attained to so high a position in public life, and frequently expressed 
his astonishment at the great power he was conscious of exercising 
over men of all kinds and natures — a power which proceeded from 
the complete conviction that all men felt in his thorough honesty 
and simple love of truth." 

Sir James Mackintosh. — The great Whig leader was grandly 
eloquent — at times ; but it seemed as hard to rouse him to exertion 



I2 o SPRING RICE. 

as it would have been to move the half-torpid sloth. His exordiums 
were sluggish ; not so his perorations. He spoke, however, like a 
machine, that, once set moving, will go on doing its allotted work 
effectually to the end. He would sway backward and forward, as 
if his head were too heavy for his body. Those who remember him 
before his actual decay will recall him as altogether Scottish in man- 
ner and mind : his accent retained the smack of early training. 
Lacking grace and dignity, the spirit of earnestness that pervaded 
his speeches almost supplied the places of both. 

Mackintosh was but twenty-four years of age when he entered the 
arena as the opponent of the great man of the age — Edmund Burke ; 
he took, however, the unpopular side — as the apologist for, if not the 
vindicator of, the French Revolution, and not very long afterward 
defended the editor Peltier, who was prosecuted — by Napoleon Bo- 
naparte, First Consul of France — for libel, in an English court of 
justice. 

He was seven or eight years in India as Recorder of Bombay, 
returning to England to be elected to Parliament, and distinguishing 
himself by his industry and eloquence on all the leading topics which 
then agitated public opinion — the slave-trade, Parliamentary reform, 
and religious toleration. Yet it has been justly said of him that his 
life produced far too little : it was brighter and better in the bud 
than in the fruit, and although an eloquent speaker, a brilliant con- 
versationalist, a powerful advocate, and an able writer, his whole 
career has left little to point a moral. He died on the 30th May, 

l8 3 2 - 

Rogers said of him : " I never saw a man with a fuller mind ; with 

greater readiness on all subjects ; and such a talker ! " In society 
his manners and conversation were fascinating. He happily united 
the philosopher with the man of the world, and added the accom- 
plishments of a gentleman to the attainments of a scholar. 

Mackintosh was usually sluggish — often as much so as his pro- 
verbially sleepy neighbor, Charles Grant — afterward Lord Glenelg ; 
but when suddenly excited, he poured forth a torrent of eloquence, 
majestic in its wrath ; when indignation roused him, it was generally 
an instant outburst — at least in his latter days. It would not seem 
exaggeration, to those who remember him in his decadence, to liken 
it to a volcanic fire. 

Spring Rice, afterward Lord Monteagle, was an active, ener- 
getic man, both in his prime and in his decay, but one of the u re- 
spectabilities " of Parliament, who rise less by their own merits than 
out of fortuitous circumstances. He became Chancellor of the Ex- 
chequer : how it so chanced, it would be hard to say. I knew him 
no long time before his death, when he was auditor of the " Night- 
ingale Fund," and esteemed him very highly as a kind, courteous, 



SIR FRANCIS BURDETT. 121 

and intelligent gentleman. Though his niche in biography is ob- 
scure, his famous speech in 1834, of five hours' duration, against 
O'Connell's motion for a Repeal of the Union, might be of use now, 
if some one would pick the kernel from the shell. 

Croker. — Very different was his countryman, John Wilson 
Croker — long Secretary to the Admiralty. I quote the eminent 
author, R. R. Madden — Croker was " an adventurer whose path from 
obscurity to greatness was paved with dead men's skulls." He is 
painted in unflattering colors by Lord Beaconsfield, and earned un- 
enviable celebrity as the " Crawley Junior " of Lady Morgan's 
" Florence Macarthy." In Parliament he was either a useful sup- 
porter or a dangerous enemy : always on the watch, like a fox, for a 
heedless goose ; ever at hand to stab an adversary or shield an ally. 
It is certain of him that neither in his own country nor in England 
had he many friends, while few have ever been so intensely hated. 
What Lord Russell says of him is just, " by his profusion of words, 
by his warmth of declamation, and by his elaborate working out of 
details, he was a formidable adversary." The Quarterly Review was 
to him, for many years, what the hair of Samson was to the strong 
chieftain of the Israelites. 

Sir Francis Burdett. — It was always a treat to hear Sir Francis 
Burdett. Without being at all an orator, he was certainly among the 
best of good speakers : self-possessed, yet animated, with a free flow 
of words and an earnestness that carried conviction. His advocacy 
of Catholic Emancipation, repeated so often, went far to obtain con- 
verts. Is it strange that Ireland never appreciated the immense help 
it received from the chivalric defender of its " rights " and the rights 
of humanity ? 

He seemed to me as if he ought always to have been on horse- 
back. Very tall and very thin, he wore, in 1828, the unpicturesque 
dress of half a century before, of which the knee-breeches, the swal- 
low-tailed coat, and the large stiff neckcloth were the distinguishing 
characteristics. It was pleasant to see the tall though slender form, 
the strongly outlined yet gently expressive features — at once hand- 
some and manly — of one who was the ideal of a free-born English 
gentleman, who, valuing the blessings of Liberty, desired to share 
them with all humankind. No doubt he would not now be consid- 
ered the visionary that men then held him to be ; for some of his 
wildest dreams of " futurity " have become recognized facts. In 
March, 1824, he carried his motion for the appointment of a com- 
mittee "to inquire as to the state of the laws affecting his Majesty's 
Roman Catholic subjects " — carried it by 247 to 234 ; and the British 
and Irish public saw that the settlement of the " claims " could not 
be much longer postponed. 

When the Irish erect statues to the memories of Anglo-Saxons 



122 SIR FRANCIS BURDETT. 

who have been the best friends of Ireland, surely that of Sir Francis 
Burdett will be one of them. 

It was no slur, at all events it incurred no relf-reproach, that Bur- 
dett was fined ^2,000 and sentenced to three months' imprisonment 
for publishing a letter " reflecting on the Manchester massacre " — of 
which " he did not repent." On several other occasions when his in- 
dignant appeals for justice echoed through the House of Commons, 
or when courts of law heard him unshrinkingly reiterate avowals that 
made him in the eye of the law a culprit, he never forgot the man- 
ners of a gentleman. I am sure that when the Sergeant-at-Arms 
conveyed him to the Tower, he gave to that emissary the back seat 
in his carriage. 

It was in 1810 that Sir Francis was committed to the Tower. His 
offense was that he had published in Cobbetfs Weekly Register a letter 
denying the power of the Commons to commit to prison any person 
not a member of the House ; a somewhat furious Radical, Gale 
Jones, having been so punished. Burdett resisted the " order," re- 
fused to admit its legality, barricaded his house, and stood a siege, 
yielding only when a force of twenty police officers, assisted by de- 
tachments of cavalry and infantry, was brought to secure him. It is 
said that on entering they found him calmly teaching his son to read 
and translate the Magna Charta. On his way to the Tower his es- 
cort was attacked by an " infuriated populace," and several on both 
sides were killed. 

Burdett maintained that the imprisonment of Gale Jones was " an 
infringement of the laws of the land, and a subversion of the princi- 
ples of the Constitution " ; and affirmed that the words of the 
eminent judge Sir Fletcher Norton were "just though coarse" — 
that he would " pay no more attention to a resolution of the House 
of Commons than to that of a set of drunken porters at an ale- 
house." 

The letter was addressed to his constituents " denying the power 
of the House of Commons to imprison the people of England." It 
was a brave, bold, manly, daring appeal ; which the House resolved 
was " libelous and scandalous." A motion made that he should be 
expelled the House was answered by the suggestive hint that he 
would be returned again. 

It is emphatically and very truly said that he was " more than 
consoled by the addresses he received from different parts of the 
kingdom " ; also by the petitions to the House for his release, one 
of them being from the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Livery of the 
City of London. Some were rejected as not being sufficiently re- 
spectful. Preparations were made for his reception when the proro- 
gation of Parliament opened his prison-doors. Sir Francis wisely 
avoided a public demonstration by going from the Tower to West- 
minster by water, to the great wrath and indignation of a huge mob, 



SIR FRANCIS BURDETT. 



123 



many of whom would, no doubt, have been shot but for the merciful 
prudence of their idol. 

It is impossible to recall to memory this chivalric gentleman with- 
out a word of reference to the most estimable lady, his daughter, the 
Baroness Burdett-Coutts, of whom it has been justly said, "the 
meanest of her gifts are wealth and fame." I have never spoken to 
her, and probably never shall do so ; but it is impossible for any one 
who takes note of the charity that is doing God's daily work among 
us to pass over the name of this "good woman." If God has given 
her wealth, it is expended in His service — for the benefit of all the 
creatures He has made. 

A sight I well remember was Sir Francis soliciting the " most 
sweet voices " of Westminster voters,* from the hustings at Covent 
Garden, amid a tempest of turnips and cabbages, with an occasional 
dead cat (intended, however, for candidates on the other side). His 
good temper combined with sound policy, and especially his ultra- 
Radical "notions," made his return as sure as was night to follow 
day. 

By his side sat Sir John Cam Hobhouse — the jackdaw mating 
with the eagle. He was a small and squat-figured man, who was 
always biting his nails. In outer aspect he was the opposite to his 
friend ; and surely their natures were very different. It would have 
been no very far-fetched picture to have painted them as Don Quix- 
ote and Sancho Panza, excepting that the round, good-humored face 
of Sancho must have been removed to make way for one that ex- 
pressed petulance, irritability, and impatience under mob-rule, and 
utter contempt for the voters who sent him into Parliament. Hob- 
house was a smart speaker — nothing more — and perhaps as little 
fitted to represent " the people " as the meanest potato-dealer in the 
market ; yet he occupied more than once a position in the Govern- 
ment, which Sir Francis never did. Cam Hobhouse might not un- 
justly be compared to a wasp, flitting about from place to place, 
seemingly without any distinct object, but whose vicinity was dan- 
gerous, and whose bite was venomous. 

For some time previous to 1837 Sir Francis had rarely taken any 
share in the proceedings of the House of Commons. The electors 
of Westminster were dissatisfied ; more especially as the other mem- 
ber, Colonel Sir De Lacy Evans, had been a long time away com- 
manding a British legion in Spain. Sir Francis, with the chivalry 
that had been his characteristic all his life, at once resigned his seat 
and sought re-election, calling upon the electors to aid him in a 
struggle against " an unnatural alliance, an odious yet ludicrous com- 

* He was returned as the representative for Westminster so far back as 1807. 



124 



LORD HOLLAND. 



bination of Irish agitators, popish priests, and paid patriots " ; and 
in spite of immense efforts of his adversaries, " Whigs and Radicals 
combined," he was returned. That he had become a Conservative 
was not doubted. O'Connell styled him an " old renegade." He 
had resolved to oppose further encroachments on the Constitution ; 
and he who had in his younger days contended for Universal Suf- 
frage, Vote by Ballot, and Annual Parliaments, in 1837 took his seat 
on the Opposition benches, i. e., on the Conservative side of the 
House, where he was greeted by Mr. Sheil, in one of his wild poetic 
flights of fancy, as " a venerable relic of a temple dedicated to Free- 
dom, though ill-omened birds now built their nests and found shelter 
in that once noble edifice." 

No doubt the venerable aristocrat was ashamed as well as alarmed 
to find that, after the Reform Bill of 1832, he was sitting beside 
Cobbett and Hunt, Gully, the prize-fighter, and a number of similar 
" tribunes of the people." 

I remember a high Tory sitting by my side, when Sir Francis was 
an ''out-and-out Radical," murmuring a grudging compliment to 
him by quoting the passage — 

" The Prince of Darkness is a gentleman." 

In January, 1844, Sir Francis Burdett's wife died ; he departed 
this life a month later. Both were buried on one day in one grave. 
He was dying when she died. It was a happy destiny — one to be 
envied — the separation so brief, to be followed by a union that 
endures for ever and ever. 

Lord Holland. — I recall Lord Holland as I remember him 
fifty years ago. His person and his face were " round," yet it was a 
peculiarly pleasing face, although with little energy or expression. 
Indeed, it seemed as if his motto were " Dolce far niente" and of a 
surety he loved repose better than action. 

Lord Brougham, who knew him well and esteemed him highly — 
as indeed did all who knew him — describes his conversation as de- 
lightful, varied, animated, and full of information ; sagacious as an 
adviser, firm as a friend, amiable in disposition and in heart. He is 
that Lord Holland of whom so many of his contemporaries — mag- 
nates in art, literature, and science, lords of the pencil and the pen 
— spoke and wrote in terms of high respect and affectionate regard : 
hundreds of lofty souls who would have adopted the grateful lauda- 
tion of Macaulay, uttered in 1841 : "The time is coming when, per- 
haps, a few old men, the last survivors of our generation, will in vain 
seek among new streets and squares and railway-stations for the site 
of that dwelling which was in their youth the favorite resort of wits 
and beauties, of painters and poets, of scholars, philosophers, and 
statesmen. They will recollect how many men who have guarded 
the politics of Europe, who have moved great assemblies by reason 



JOSEPH HUME. I2 $ 

and eloquence, who have put life into bronze and canvas, or who 
have left to posterity things so written, that it shall not willingly let 
them die." 

Lord Holland might have suggested the idea of an elderly " young 
Norval " — gallant, handsome, imperious — his face " round as his 
shield." It was said that his great-uncle, Charles James Fox, was 
the quarto, of which he was the duodecimo ; but he obtained the 
affection as well as the respect of troops of friends, and his receptions 
at Holland House, to which it is said so many were " invited as curi- 
osities," are referred to with affectionate remembrance by all celebri- 
ties, home and foreign, of the age in which he lived. 

Joseph Hume. — At the period of which I write, Joseph Hume 
was nearly every night heard in the House. He was member for 
Middlesex, and one of the " heads " of the extreme Radical party 
in Parliament. He was the apostle of small things ; a teasing, biting 
flea in the House of Commons, that would let no minister of any 
department sit easy in his seat. Not long ago I heard a man say this 
at a Temperance lecture, " A flea in the ear is a greater nuisance 
than a bull in a field." Hume was a man of stout, sturdy frame, 
somewhat above the middle height, with lungs enduring, if not pow- 
erful. It was impossible to put him down ; what he had to say he 
would say, in spite of coughing, house-thinning, and empty benches.* 
When he had done, his long speech was frequently cut down to ten 
lines of type — as reported. His rising was a signal that members 
might safely leave the House for an hour or more. Hence he ob- 
tained the cognomen of "the dinner-bell." The word "vulgar" is, 
perhaps, too strong a term to apply to him, but there were essentials 
of vulgarity in his manner and language (often disagreeably Scottish) 
— in nearly all the themes on which he discoursed — dryly, without a 
touch of human, and without approach to moving, eloquence. 

Yet he was an honest man, who meant what he said, and said 
what he meant ; mentally fearless, certainly, he was, conveying con- 
viction that he desired to do right, and to be useful — in his own way. 
And he was so, when Government money was looked upon as flot- 
sam and jetsam that any official 

" Might take who had the power." 

Beyond doubt he saved vast sums to the country, although taken 
separately the items were as the parings of a cheese, or the ends of 
farthing candles. I give Earl Russell's estimate of Joseph Hume — 
" He had great knowledge of details, unblemished honesty, and dog- 

* His master theme was arithmetic. The burden of every speech was " pounds, 
shillings, and pence," and his peroration had regard to " the sum tottle of the 
whole." It was said that Hume made a calculation as to the amount that might 
be saved to the empire by the introduction of "save-alls" (a now obsolete inven- 
tion for the consumption of candle-ends) into the British Navy. 



126 LORD PLUNKETT. 

ged perseverance." Yet the sayings of Hume in the House, if some 
one would have the patience to pull them out from the garbage in 
which they were imbedded, might fill a volume. I do not allude to 
such as this — " He saw no use in being a Member of Parliament, save 
that a man might speak his sentiments safe from the fangs of the 
Attorney-General " ; but the maxims of sound sense, practical knowl- 
edge, judicious economy, and liberal thrift, which nations as well as 
individuals ought to be taught and teach. 

For example, he complained that the clerks in the Treasury used 
gilt-edged paper : the practice was abandoned. 

Palmerston said of him and his " tottle of the whole " : " An an- 
cient sage asserted there were two things over which even the immor- 
tal gods had no power — past events and arithmetic ; the honorable 
gentleman, however, seemed to have power over both." * 

" For nearly forty years," according to his friend Cobden, "he 
had fought against majorities " ; and Cobden bears this testimony to 
his character, " A more indefatigable, more devoted, a more disinter- 
ested patriot never lived." 

His robust constitution never gave way, although night after night 
he was in his seat, eagerly watching to pick a hole in the coat of any 
Chancellor of the Exchequer — of whom he was the terror ; it is cer- 
tain that the dread of what Joe Hume would say a hundred times 
swayed the " estimates." 

Hume, having been rejected by Middlesex, was sent to Parlia- 
ment by the city of Kilkenny, a city he had never seen, by a people 
of whom he knew nothing ; he was returned without expense, which 
no doubt was just what he liked. It is said, indeed, that his election 
costs amounted to just the tenpence postage of the letter that in- 
formed him of his return. 

Lord Plunkett. — The name of Lord Plunkett, some time 
Chancellor of Ireland, though unfamiliar to the present generation, 
can not be forgotten ; although with Grattan, Flood, and Curran he 
had given luster to the Irish Parliament at the close of the eighteenth 
century. He lived until the year 1854. He was a veritable orator. 
If he had the advantages, he had not the disadvantages that usually 
appertain to " Irish " orators — he was rarely guilty of exaggeration, 

* An amusing story was current concerning Joseph Hume. I have no doubt it 
actually occurred ; for, though great at arithmetic, he was not good at quotation. 
One night in the House he thus addressed an opponent : " The honorable member 
need not lay that flattering unction to his chest ! " It is hardly necessaiy to say 
that this simple substitution of one word for another was received with roars of 
laughter. 

A story was told of a reporter- 1 — Irish, of course — who going into a tavern after 
taking his hour's notes, and being desirous of reporting with accuracy the style and 
substance of the speech he had heard, exclaimed, " Waiter, bring me a pot of por- 
ter till I muddle my brains for that Joe Hume ! " 



LORD STANLEY. l2 j 

and never seemed to extenuate a fact. Sir Robert Peel said of him, 
" He more than any other man contributed to the success of the 
Roman Catholic question." He did that more by argument than 
" talk." 

Lord Plunkett had been appointed to the Mastership of the Rolls 
in England, but resigned in consequence of hostility manifested by 
" the Profession " to the appointment. Yet by the same minister, an 
Englishman, Sir Anthony Hart, was appointed Irish Chancellor. 

In our time "justice to Ireland" gave to an Irishman, Earl 
Cairns, the Lord Chancellorship of England ! No man complained ; 
the public was more than satisfied ; the Bar neither grumbled nor 
protested, but applauded ! 

Is this indicative of no change in the feeling of England toward 
Ireland ? Is there no echo to the outcry of 1826, when so truly 
great and excellent a man as Plunkett dared not attempt to take the 
office, and endure the " envy, hatred, and malice " of his brothers of 
the profession on the ground — and on no other ground — that he was 
an Irishman ? Sic transit odium mundi ! 

Yet there is not, and never will be, a statue of Plunkett among 
Ireland's memories in marble of the great men Ireland claims as her 
own. 

I quote the words of Lord Plunkett, uttered in 182 1 when advo- 
cating the claims of Roman Catholics : 

" Walking before the sacred images of these illustrious dead, as 
in a public and solemn procession, shall we not dismiss all party feel- 
ing, all angry passions, and unworthy prejudices ? " 

Let it be recorded that one of his descendants is, in 1883, fore- 
most among the men who add to the glory, and take from the shame, 
of Ireland. 

" Lord Stanley." — I heard and reported Lord Stanley's maiden 
speech in 1824, and remember well the impression he made. It was 
about nothing, and amounted to nothing. It concerned only a proj- 
ect for lighting Manchester with gas ; yet it gave assurance of that 
power which afterward made so prominent " the Rupert of Debate." 
A contemporary, Lytton Bulwer, in " The New Timon," speaks of 
his " elegance and sweetness of expression " ; and many write of his 
powerful eloquence, warmth, and energy, combined with courtesy 
and prudence. Yet no man in either House could be more bitter, 
sarcastic, and exasperating, and no foe dared be indifferent to his 
wrath. Perhaps O'Connell was the only man who ventured fear- 
lessly to take up the gauntlet that " Scorpion Stanley " had thrown 
down. His maiden speech, unimportant though it was, created in 
the House instinctive conviction that he was destined to fill a pre- 
mier role in the great drama of the future ; and there was unanimous 



128 THE EARL OF CARLISLE. 

assent to the words of Mackintosh, that he was " an accession to the 
House calculated to give luster to its character and strengthen its 
influence." There are thousands yet living who can remember the 
great Earl of Derby when Prime Minister. 

Macaulay said of him that he was " an orator whose knowledge 
of Parliamentary defense resembled an instinct." 

Just forty years after that maiden speech he also was a prophet 
— advocating the Parliamentary Reform Bill as truly " a leap in the 
dark," but as certain to "place the institutions of the country on a 
firmer basis." 

The Earl of Carlisle. — The life of Lord Morpeth, long the 
Irish Secretary, and afterward the Irish Viceroy (as Earl of Car- 
lisle), was comparatively easy as well as prosperous, and — certainly 
successful. His mind was highly and richly cultivated ; he was a 
scholar yet a statesman, and preserved the regard and the respect, 
nay, almost the affection, of a people of very opposite ways and 
creeds — the Irish people, " the ungovernable people he governed." 
He may have had more of the suaviter in modo than the fortiter in 
re j he may have been more amiable than resolute, and have studied 
the arts of politeness, that lead rather to affection than respect — and 
his weight in the Senate may not have been in proportion to his 
influence in private life ; but he was a most lovable man, and his 
place in Irish history is that of one who ever remembered, accord- 
ing to the memorable sentence of the ablest of his aides-de-camp 
(Drummond), that "prosperity has its duties as well as its rights." 

Always an impressive and effective speaker, though by no means 
an orator, he won golden opinions by sound sense and carefully con- 
sidered study of his subject : there was universal confidence in his 
uprightness as a statesman and a man. Of lofty and pure descent 
on all sides, noble for centuries, honoring, as well as receiving honor 
from, a line of ancestors — the loftiest, purest, and best ; he inherited 
and transmitted to the future a proud name. There has been no 
family for centuries gone — or of the present — with a better right to 
pride. 

In 1848 I had some correspondence with him concerning the 
possibility of an exhibition in England similar to the exhibition that 
had long been famous and serviceable in France — a foreshadowing 
of the Great exhibition of 1851 in Hyde Park. His view did not 
coincide with mine ; in fact, it was discouraging — he was more ap- 
prehensive than hopeful as to the issue : yet not entirely so, as the 
accompanying letter will show : 

"Castle Howard, January 28th. 

" Sir : I like the paper to which you have called my attention very much. 

What I have to say discouraging is that I did formerly belong to a committee 

of gentlemen, well qualified for the purpose on the whole, who made the 

attempt to have a national exposition at the building formerly the Mews, on 



LORD HAMPTON. I2 q 

the site of the present National Gallery. The late Dr. Birkbeck took especial 
pains in the matter, but the results were not encouraging. I admit, however, 
that it was not a very imposing attempt. 

" My next discouraging observation is, that I have great doubts whether 
the English are on the whole an exhibiting people, as the French are ; and 
whether our inventors and designers do not prefer to keep a good thing, 
when they hit upon it, at home on their own premises, or in their own shops 
and warehouses. 

" And my last observation of this character is that in the present times of 
pressure it would be hopeless to obtain any disbursement of this character 
from the Treasury. 

" I have thought it my duty to give vent to this much on the discouraging 
side ; on the other hand, I must say (for myself) that if I saw an opening for 
any practicable and well-organized scheme of the kind, I should feel myself 
happy and honored in doing what I could to promote it. It is always pru- 
dent in the first instance to take into consideration the drawbacks and diffi- 
culties of the case, though there may be no necessity of ultimately succumbing 
to them. 

" I have the honor to be, Sir, 

" Your very faithful servant, 

" Morpeth." 

We had the honor twice to be the guests of the Earl of Carlisle 
during his viceroyalty in Ireland. One of them was a state occasion, 
when there were present Lord John Russell and many other great 
men of the period. I do not recall it vividly. The viceregal lodge 
is a- poor structure, and not so fitted up as to suggest reverence, al- 
though it contains many portraits of celebrities whose names are 
linked with the history of Ireland. I can remember but one inci- 
dent worth — and barely worth — recording. Mrs. Hall wore a cap 
in which were green and orange ribbons. " Ah ! " said his Excel- 
lency, " I have been long striving to mingle these colors, as you do, 
and have not yet succeeded." 

Lord Hampton. — It is with a sense of gratitude, as well as re- 
spect, I write the name of Lord Hampton, the Sir John Pakington, 
Bart., of the House of Commons. In 1874 I visited, to describe, 
his seat, Westwood, near Droitwich, one of the most perfect and 
beautiful of "The Stately Homes of England," and on that and 
other occasions had the honor and the happiness to be the guest of 
the most excellent and estimable man. He had held several high 
offices in the Government — the Conservative Government ; but when 
rejected by the town he had so long, worthily, and usefully repre- 
sented, he was created a peer and retired from public life. 

Lord Hampton is by no means entirely, or even mainly, indebted 
for renown to the high positions he had occupied, although they 
are among the very highest. There have been few projects de- 
signed and calculated to benefit mankind to which he was not, in 
some way, a contributor ; foremost, indeed, he always was in every 
good work that might lessen suffering, extend social advantages, and 
9 



130 



DICK MARTIN. 



advance the cause of education and religion. The descendant and 
representative of a race that has for centuries given to England, pa- 
triots, in the best sense of the word, he was a powerful benefactor 
wherever his influence could reach. 

It was a pleasure to see, and a privilege to know, Lord Hamp- 
ton either in the House of Peers, to which he was elevated, or as Sir 
John Pakington in the House of Commons : kindly and courteous, 
one who, if a Conservative, loved the people, and was a leader in all 
wise projects to advance the interests of humankind. 

Dick Martin. — Among the most vivid of my Recollections is 
that of dear " Dick Martin," who so long represented Galway County 
both in the Irish and in the British Parliament. He was born in 
1754, and died in 1834. A short, thick-set man, with evidence in 
look and manner, even in step and action, of indomitable resolution. 
He blundered his way into a reform — blessed in its influences and 
mighty in its results. Let him, in spite of follies that became vices, 
and notwithstanding a life of recklessness, illustrating the character 
of the old Irish gentleman of a century back — let him bear to the 
end of time, as a partial recompense for good work done on earth, 
and as a title of which a canonized saint might be proud, the hon- 
ored name of " Humanity Martin." 

The nineteenth century was young when Lord Erskine in the 
House of Peers, and Martin of Galway in the House of Commons, 
dared to ask that Parliament should, by some legislative enactment, 
so far interfere for the protection of animals as to punish those who 
were guilty of cruelty to them. It seemed to many a monstrous 
proposition that a man should be fined and imprisoned for kicking 
a horse, or beating a dog, that was as much his own property as the 
shoes with which he kicked the one, or the stick with which he beat 
the other. It was surely aiming a death-blow at the freeborn right 
of an Englishman — the right to do what he liked with his own ! 

Said an indignant Yankee in one of the modern plays, " A pretty 
land of liberty this is, where a man mayn't wallop his own nigger ! " 
There was just as rational, and quite as loud, a complaint when a 
majority of national representatives in England yielded to the mer- 
ciful pressure of a few earnest men, and resolved to protect the low- 
er creation by an Act of Parliament, that has for more than half a 
century shed a halo round the name and consecrated the memory of 
Richard Martin. Providence often makes use of strange tools ; per- 
haps there has been none that seemed less fitting for its purpose than 
this. He was entirely without influence, social or political ; although 
nominally the owner of an immense estate — it was his boast that be- 
tween his entrance-gate and his hall-door there were thirty miles : it 
was that distance from Outerard to Ballynahinch — he very rarely (if 
indeed he ever did) owned a hundred pounds that he could justly 
call his own. 



DICK MARTIN. I3I 

The first meeting to petition Parliament was held at Slaughter's 
Coffee-House, St. Martin's Lane, on the 24th June, 1824. Colonel 
Martin was present ; and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty 
to Animals then and there originated. The society, as our readers 
know, flourishes now, and does all the good that could have been 
hoped for, and prayed for, by its few resolute and brave originators 
— foremost of whom was a Jew, Lewis Gompertz. 

I remember the meeting well, for I reported it. I had known 
Colonel Martin previously, and conversed with him then as to a 
project I no doubt considered visionary. I have lived to see even 
greater events spring from smaller causes. 

It was a thin meeting — that I recall ; but the Irish heartiness of 
Martin gave it warmth, fervor, and energy. I do not believe there 
was another person present so sanguine as to think that Parliament 
would ever be the protector of a "lower world." Yet the advocates 
had not long to wait. It is but a faint remembrance I have of the 
scene, but I can clearly call to mind Dick uttering an oath, essentially 
Irish, that " by J he'd make 'em do it ! " and, somehow, he did. 

Thus the wild, energetic, heedless, and usually unreasoning Irish- 
man is for this act classed, and rightly so, among the benefactors of 
his country and all other countries, of the old world and the new. 

He was sincere as well as earnest in advocacy of the " brute," 
when such advocacy usually supplied only material for mockery and 
scorn ; and he was one of the very earliest of legislators to protest 
against the punishment of death for forgery. I believe Dick Martin 
had as warm and sound a heart as ever beat in human bosom. His 
vices were those of his age — " thrust upon him." He was kindly 
and sympathizing, as well as generous and brave ; and if the melo- 
dramatic picture of the old Irish gentleman is somewhat illustrated 
by his life, he was in many ways just the man to whom posterity 
need not grudge the honor and glory that crowns the name of the 
member for Galway, the sovereign of a large tract that was his king- 
dom, where for more than half a century he ruled 

" The houseless wilds of Connemara." 

Many whimsical anecdotes are told of him — of his bulls and 
blunders in the House ; for example, his protesting against the re- 
porters as having misreported a speech, making him spake in ital- 
ics." I believe his " bulls " were often made for, and not by, him ; 
but usually when he rose there was an unsuppressed titter in the 
House. 

There is not a stick or stone in Connemara now owned by any of 
the descendants of Oliver Martyn, one of the soldiers of Strongbow, 
who " obtained " (ang/ic£, took) from the aboriginal Irish the broad 
lands of Galway, chiefly those that had belonged to a sept, concern- 
ing whom this was the prayer of their conquerors : 

" From the ferocious O '-Flaherties, good Lord deliver us ! " 



I3 2 LORD JOHN RUSSELL. 

Some of his descendants yet survive, but it is in poverty — it is 
not too much to say the extreme of poverty. That it is so ought not 
to be merely a matter for regret. To our shame be it recorded.* I 
might greatly enlarge upon this subject ; but to do so would be to 
hurt the feelings of ladies who are of his blood, who inherit his name 
and his " glory." 

Lord John Russell. — Earl Russell, who was born in 1792, died 
so recently as 1878, outliving all the great men who had been his 
colleagues and coadjutors in several " Governments." The vener- 
able statesman was thus eighty-six years old when he left earth, at 
the Lodge in Richmond Park, allotted to him by the Queen. He 
passed in that charming retreat, in tranquil retirement, the residue 
of a career that commenced when he was returned to Parliament by 
the electors of the family borough of Tavistock ; no doubt often re- 
minded there of the passage in an after-dinner speech, at Edinburgh, 
in 1863, "Rest and be thankful."! 

Lord John owed but a small debt to Nature : undersized, un- 
dignified, ungraceful ; a bad speaker, with no pretense to eloquence 
either in thought, word, or action, he yet held a foremost place in 
the arena, for more than half a century. He said of himself, " My 
capacity I always felt was very inferior to that of the men who have 
attained, in past time, the foremost places in our Parliament, and in 
the councils of our Sovereign." 

A consistent Whig always ; the representative of a family of Whigs 
— the illustrious house of Bedford ; one of the descendants of that 
Lord William who, " for the old cause," died on a scaffold — legally 
murdered by a recreant jury — and bearing the honored name of — 
" That sweet saint who stood by Russell's side," 

he consecrated the name less by his own deeds than the renown 
achieved by a long line of ancestors. Prudent, just, generally wise, 
and usually in the right, he had always a large " following " — rather 
than a troop of friends. It may be true of him what Bulwer says in 
" The New Timon " : 

" Like or dislike, he does not care a jot, 
He wants your vote, but your affection not." 

* He was almost idolized by the people over whom he ruled in wild Connemara. 
I heard this anecdote from one of his descendants : A rumor reached the district 
that the packet in which he was crossing from England to Ireland had been 
wrecked. Amid the lamentations, dismay, and confusion of the household in Bally- 
nahinch, one aged woman retained self-possession and was heard to say, " No one 
need be afeared for the master ; for if he was in the midst of a raging sea the 
prayers of widows and orphans would keep his head above water." 

f The passage is this, replying to the toast of her Majesty's Ministers : " With 
regard to domestic policy I think we are all pretty much agreed, because the feel- 
ing of the country, and of those who have conducted great reforms, is very much 
like that of a man who, having made a road in your own Highlands, put a stone 
on the top of a mountain with an inscription — ' Rest and be thankful.' " 



LORD MACAULAY. 



133 



As Prime Minister he did nothing to augment the fame of the 
race from which he sprung. His career. was aptly illustrated by the 
prophetic caricature in Punch, representing a little insignificant page 
seeking to be engaged in the service of the Queen, who addresses 
him thus, "John, I think you are not strong enough for the place." 

An ancient vault at Chenies received all that was mortal of John, 
Earl Russell. Scarcely had he been laid in the grave when there 
occurred a commemoration of his foremost political triumph. Three 
hundred noblemen and gentlemen, the chiefs of the Nonconformists, 
met at the Cannon Street Hotel, their errand being to celebrate the 
fiftieth anniversary of a red-letter day in our constitutional calendar. 
Many who read this must be familiar with the stirring words in Le- 
viticus : " Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the jubilee to sound. 
. . . And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty 
throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof." On May 
9, 1828, religious liberty was proclaimed to Englishmen.* The re- 
peal of the Corporation and Test Acts was a token that the day of 
Catholic Emancipation had at length drawn near ; and in winning 
the battle of Geneva, Lord John Russell was doing priceless service 
to Rome. The following year saw Catholics admitted to Parliament. 
The year of grace, 1878, will be remembered both for the jubilee of 
the Test Act repeal and the death of the venerable statesman by 
whom that repeal was secured. 

Macaulay. — I never heard Macaulay speak in the House, where, 
although by no means an orator, he always made a strong impres- 
sion. He spoke as he wrote — eloquently, in the choicest diction — 
smooth, easy, graceful, and ever to the purpose ; striving to convince 
rather than persuade, and grudging no toil of preparation to sustain 
an argument or enforce a truth. His person was in his favor ; in 
form as in mind he was robust, with a remarkably intelligent expres- 
sion, aided by deep-blue eyes that seemed to sparkle, and a mouth 
remarkably flexible. His countenance was certainly well calculated 
to impress on his audience the classical language ever at his com- 
mand — so faithfully did it mirror the high intelligence of the speaker. 
Yet he never created enthusiasm, and seemed aiming only to con- 
vince. I had two or three interviews with him — at the Albany, when 
he was writing his History. He had reached that portion of it which 
describes the battle of the Boyne ; and knowing I was familiar with 
the subject, he honored me by consulting me as to facts connected 
with the river and the localities associated with the memorable cross- 

* Lord Russell, in his " Recollections," makes this modest record of one of the 
grandest triumphs of the century : 

" In 1828, at the request of a body of Protestant Dissenters, I brought forward 
a motion for the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts ; and, to my great sur- 
prise, carried it by a majority of forty." 



134 S/Ji GEORGE GREY. 

ing of King William, and also as to my knowledge of places conse- 
crated by the siege of Derry. I found him — as the world has found 
him — a man of rare intelligence, deep research, and untiring energy 
in pursuit of facts : also a kind, courteous, and unaffected gentle- 
man. His memory is to me one of the pleasantest I can recall. 

He may have been a warm friend, but he was certainly not a re- 
lentless enemy. In 1857 he was removed to the House of Peers : 
but he left no mark there. On the 21st December, 1859, he was 
found dead in his chair in the library of his house at Kensington, 
with an open book in his hand. He was buried in Westminster 
Abbey. After his death there came forth much evidence, little ex- 
pected, of the kindliness and generosity of his nature. 

Sir George Grey died so recently as September, 1882, at the age 
of eighty-four. He had, during many years, enjoyed in retirement the 
repose he had well earned by duly recognized labor in the public 
service — some time as Home Secretary. I had the great pleasure to 
spend a week in his society, as the fellow-guest of a mutual friend — 
Mr. Gordon, of Stocks, near Tring. It was, if I recollect rightly, in 
1849. A more kindly, courteous, and agreeable gentleman I have 
never met. Our " talk " was — much of it — as regarded my cherished 
scheme of an exhibition of Art manufacture in Hyde Park, to which 
I found him opposed — mainly on the ground of its cost to the na- 
tion ; I vainly strove to convince him it would be absolutely noth- 
ing : at all events, nothing beyond the price of medals for distribu- 
tion to successful competitors. I had had correspondence with 
another member of the then Government — the Right Hon. Thomas 
Wyse — the result of which was hardly more encouraging, as well as 
with Lord Morpeth — to which I have elsewhere referred. 

Sir George Grey was mainly indebted for his popularity to the 
prudence and courage with which he encountered the threatened 
outbreak of the Chartists in 1848. An absolute army of special con- 
stables was enrolled ; noblemen and gentlemen, the humblest trades- 
men, and men of yet lower grade, served together in its ranks, num- 
bering, it was said, much over a hundred thousand.* We were 
posted in all the leading streets of the Metropolis ; and it was at 
once seen that the Chartists had not the shadow of a chance in the 
fight they anticipated, and for which they had prepared — chiefly 
under the direction of their leader, Feargus O'Connor, M. P.f More- 

* Among the foremost to become a special constable was the Prince Louis Na- 
poleon, afterward Emperor of the French. I had the honor to march by his side 
from Knightsbridge to Piccadilly, and to remain by his side all the night of the 
10th of April, 1848. 

f Not long afterward I had this anecdote from Robert Chambers. He met in 
London a man who had formerly been a compositor in his office, and thus addressed 
him: "Well, Donald, are you a Chartist now?" This was the answer he re- 
ceived : " Ah, no ! I've got two houses /" 



WILLIAM COBBETT. 



135 



over, Sir George Grey had brought into Parliament a bill " for the 
more effectual repression of treasonable and seditious proceedings." 
It was rendered necessary, not only by threats of the Chartists, but 
by the miserable " row-rebellion " in Ireland, which succumbed in 
the famous fight in the " renowned " cabbage garden, the command- 
er-in-chief on that occasion being Smith O'Brien, subsequently con- 
demned to transportation for life, commuted from a death-sentence. 
He has had another " reward," however : at the foot of Carlisle 
Bridge, in Dublin, there is a statue of the " hero " of a single fight ; 
while the hero of a hundred fights has none. 

William Cobbett — " Saul among the Prophets ! " — I knew 
more than a little of William Cobbett, member (for Oldham) between 
the years 1832 and 1835. Essentially, he was one of the people ; for 
his progenitors were all " hard-handed men " who drove the plow, 
and worked, when boys, for twopence a day — who were, in short, 
farm laborers at Farnham, where William was born in 1762 : his 
boast was not ill-grounded that if he inherited from his ancestors no 
honor, he derived from them no shame. They had as little idea that 
their son would be a Member of Parliament — one of the most noto- 
rious, if not famous, men of the age — as that they might bequeath to 
him an estate in the moon. He was, however, " cradled in wrong " : 
the disastrous and iniquitous war with our American colonies laid 
the foundation of that hatred of injustice which undoubtedly formed 
the groundwork of a character that was afterward perilous — all but 
fatal — to so many governments of Great Britain. 

In 1784 he '"listed for a soldier" ; he rose to be a sergeant- 
major. Instead of perpetually drinking, as so many of his comrades 
did, he was continually reading and thinking, laying the foundation 
of the powerful character that made him afterward dreaded by every 
department of the state. He quitted the army in 1791, and without 
the slightest taint on his reputation ; married happily ; and com- 
menced not very long afterward to wield the pen to destroy the sev- 
eral strongholds in which he and greater men considered " corrup- 
tion " had its fortifications ; assailing all he believed, rightly or 
wrongly, to be hostile to justice and freedom. So much it is my 
duty to say of one with whom I was never, at any period of life, in 
sympathy, never certainly " in sweet accord." 

It was a full life, a life of hard, eager, and, I believe, conscien- 
tious, work ; but it was the work of a Republican, if not a Revolu- 
tionist, and for a long period few men were so intensely hated or so 
entirely dreaded as William Cobbett. He and his many productions 
are forgotten by, or utterly unknown to, this generation ; his opin- 
ions are seldom or never quoted. I doubt if a hundred young men 
in the kingdom have read a line of his " Political Register," and he 
long ago ceased to be a power in the state. 

In 1806 Miss Mitford, who visited him at Botley, where he had a 



136 WILLIAM COBBETT. 

sort of farm-house, describes him as a " tall, stout man, fair and sun- 
burnt, with a bright smile and an air compounded of the soldier and 
the farmer, with unfailing good humor and good spirits." 

Perhaps no man ever lived who was more bitterly hated, or had a 
greater number of personal as well as political enemies ; he encount- 
ered them with indomitable courage, generally with their own weap- 
ons, but sometimes with good temper and good humor. " I have 
been represented," he writes, " as a bull-dog, as a porcupine, as a 
wolf, as a sans-culotte, as a bear, as a kite, as a cur." He was " a 
convicted libeler," " a firebrand," " a brutal ruffian," " a convicted 
incendiary " — " a hoary miscreant," although not fifty years old. 

He was sent to jail for two years, and he made his cell his study 
— that was in 1810 ; there he had leisure to sharpen his weapons. 
His fines were paid for him by steady and ready friends and uphold- 
ers, and in 181 2 he left his prison, stronger from having been beaten 
to earth, and better armed for the fight to which he thenceforward 
devoted not only great natural ability, but prodigious courage, inde- 
fatigable industry, untiring perseverance, enduring fortitude, and un- 
mitigated ferocity. 

Six hundred guests, presided over by Sir Francis Burdett, greeted 
him at a banquet at the Crown and Anchor, when after one of his 
trials for, libeling the Government the jury did not agree. He de- 
fended himself in the Court of Queen's Bench, being then over sev- 
enty years of age. Cobbett's most notorious escapade was, however, 
his bringing with him to England the bones of " Tom Paine " from 
America, where Paine had died. It was a speculation that did not 
answer, rewarding the importer of the relics only with laughter and 
scorn. Paine had been buried in a corner of one of his own fields, 
his request to be interred in the Quaker burial-ground having been 
declined by the " Friends." The name is seldom spoken now, un- 
less possibly in Northampton ; and a prophecy of the period has not 
been, neither is it likely to be, realized. It is as well to quote it : 
"While the dead boroughmongers, and the base slaves who have 
been their tools, moulder away under unnoticed masses of marble 
and brass, the tomb of this 'noble of nature' will be an object of 
pilgrimage with the people." Where the bones were buried I do not 
know, or if they were buried at all. I remember seeing a tobacco- 
stopper that I was assured had been one of Paine's finger-joints. 

The potato was the bete-noire of William Cobbett. His anathema 
has been often applied to it. It will be well to extract the passage 
from his biography, that cried down the root that — 

"... waxy or maaly 
Feeds Erin's inhabitants all the year round." * 

* " This root is become a favorite because it is the suitable companion of misery 
and filth. It can be seized hold of before it be half ripe, it can be raked out of 
the ground with the paws, and without the help of any utensils, except, perhaps, a 



WILLIAM COBBETT. I37 

Late in his career, there came a time when the ideal hope of his 
life was to be realized. In 1832 he was sent to Parliament by the 
people of Oldham, an honor he did not long enjoy : late hours and 
gas-light did not suit the constitution of the farmer, born and reared. 
Ill health compelled frequent absences from his place, and in 1835 
he died. 

He made but a poor figure in the House ; had not a scintillation 
of eloquence, and his manner was brusque almost to coarseness. 
The rudeness that is so often mistaken for independence never at 
any time " told " there, where the greatest and the humblest are cer- 
tain to find their true level ; and if there be any who recall him to 
memory, with a faint idea that they may accord to it respect, it will 
not be as seated on the Opposition bench of the House of Commons. 

Though he spoke often, he never made what might have been 
called " a speech." He seemed always on guard lest he might com- 
mit himself ; indeed, in the House he never seemed at home, and 
was by no means the virtuous contemner of his superiors he was ex- 
pected to have been ; few who listened to him would have thought 
they heard the author of much envenomed bitterness — the quality 
that so continually characterized his written words. But the House 
of Commons then, and for some time afterward, even after it had 
been reformed, was a place to inspire sensations of reverence, if not 
of awe. It was then — what it is not now — an assemblage of gentle- 
men where a speaker was taught to treat the Speaker with respect. 

It was, if I recollect rightly, about 1830 that I knew William 
Cobbett. Once I spent an hour with him in rooms he occupied in 
one of the courts leading out of Fleet Street ; but there was in 
Fleet Street a shop where his works were sold, and where he was to 
be found often at mid-day by those who sought him. Several times 
I was a "looker-in." He was then a hale old man, who seemed to 
have brought country air into the city, and who sought to show his 
preference for the former as much by ruddy aspect as by bluntness 
of manner, and a somewhat studied affectation of rural dress. He 
conveyed at once the impression that he was a remarkable man, and 
thus was by no means a disappointment. You were prepared to see 
just such a person as he was — a rough bludgeon, and not a malacca 
cane ; a man whose confidence in himself had been increased and 
strengthened by homage largely accorded, and by consciousness of 
power. Yet I did not find him either exacting or overbearing ; al- 
though then, as now, entirely differing from him upon nearly all the 
topics concerning which we at any time conversed — all excepting 

stick to rake it from the fire, can be conveyed into the stomach, in the space of an 
hour. We have but one step farther to go, and that is to eat it raw, side by side 
with our bristly fellow-creatures, who, by-the-by, reject it as long as they can get 
at any species of grain, or at any other vegetable." 



1 38 0' CON NELL. 

one, I should say, for his efforts to abolish flogging in the army did 
him, as I thought, great honor, and it was that topic which brought 
me to acquaintance with him. After long years, I am far more dis- 
posed to respect than to inveigh against the memory of one who, 
early in the century, was execrated as a firebrand, eager to destroy 
all the settled institutions of the state. 

When the House assembled on the evening of the 19th of June, 
1835, a whisper circulated over the benches that the member for 
Oldham was dead.* 

O'Connell. — It is absolutely necessary that I condense my 
Recollections of the great men who dignified Parliament in the days 
to which I take my reader back. There is one, however, I can not 
pass over lightly ; for, although I shall write of Daniel O'Connell in 
my records of " Ireland Sixty Years Ago," I must give to him that 
which his memory demands — a prominent place as a Member of 
Parliament. So much has been said concerning him that I can not 
be otherwise than embarrassed when treating so large and compre- 
hensive a subject. 

I was in the House of Commons when, in 1828, having been re- 
turned to represent Clare County, he advanced to the table to 
" qualify," and refused to take the oaths. Many who were present 
saw him then for the first time ; he was in the prime of life, tall, 
portly, healthy, strong, broad-shouldered, standing " well on his legs," 
one who might have been " the best wrestler on the green." His 
features, too, were handsome, notwithstanding a nose the opposite of 
Grecian, and cheeks somewhat overburdened with flesh ; they were 
singularly mobile and marvelously expressive — often saying more of 
admiration or scorn, of love or hatred, than even his burning words. 
His mouth was the feature to which he owed most, yet it was large, 
coarse, and thoroughly animal : the smile was deliciously winning, 
the snarl fiercely vindictive. The eyes were not remarkable for 
either tenderness or power : they aided him but little when he spoke, 
and brought to those who looked rather doubt than conviction as to 
the sincerity of the speaker. Sometimes, indeed, they suggested the 
thought that he was himself laughing at the solemn denunciations 
he had uttered. It can not be asserted that his countenance was 
sly. There was certainly nothing of meanness in it : it was " coax- 
ing," and had much of the " Ah ! do's " and the " Ah ! don't's " that 

* When, in 1836, an 'attempt was made to raise subscriptions for erecting a 
monument to his memory, Sir Francis Burdett being applied to, returned for an- 
swer that to attend a meeting to which he was invited, would be " to become a 
public voucher for the honesty, disinterestedness, and patriotism of the said Mr. 
Cobbett " ; whereas " he believed, rather knew, the reverse." But he (Sir Fran- 
cis) tendered to the Committee bonds in his possession — as "a handsome and 
suitable offer " — for money lent to Mr. Cobbett amounting to considerably more 
than £8,000. 



O'CONNELL. I39 

are said to make Irishwomen irresistible. Yet it was not persuasive, 
and certainly not convincing. When he pleased he had " a fine face 
for a grievance," but generally it was the opposite of that. Gifted 
with good digestion, large animal spirits, and powerful physique, his 
proper place seemed to be where dull care was driven away, and 
pleasure was the deity for worship. But O'Connell never indulged 
in the "pleasures of the table," so much in vogue when he was 
young. If he had, he would not have attained the pre-eminence to 
which he was destined : of a surety, he would have sunk into one of 
the sloughs so often in his way. 

He soon made his mark in the House, and seldom failed to find 
listeners ; yet he had almost insurmountable difficulties to contend 
with there — where the most renowned of Irish orators, Grattan and 
Flood, had failed. He was not young ; a " Papist " where none of 
his religion had been heard for centuries ; an agitator — the agitator 
— who was driving his country to the verge of another rebellion, that 
of '98 being yet a living memory. But by the force of genius he 
overcame all obstacles ; if he did not beat down opposition, he in a 
great degree dispelled prejudice ; and if he failed to effect concilia- 
tion, he at least gained by force of character the respect of adversa- 
ries. Above all, his power in Ireland was felt and acknowledged. 
He was, indeed, the moral king of his country, and there were many 
— unattracted to him by any of the ties that bind men, nay, opposed 
to him in creed and in nationality — who tendered to him involuntary 
homage. 

I never saw him in his home among the mountains and by the 
wild Atlantic waves that environ Derrynane. I can easily under- 
stand what an admirable host he was : considerate, kind, sympathetic 
— and hospitable, of course. In 1840 I received a verbal invitation 
to visit him through his and my physician, Dr. Elmore (the father, 
by-the-way, of Alfred Elmore, R. A.). I excused myself from ac- 
cepting it on the ground that as a public writer it was very frequently 
my duty to assail him, and I could not do that if I broke his bread 
and tasted his salt. The answer was : " Tell him he's a fool. Many 
have been my visitors who abused me, and they were quite as free to 
do so, after, as they had been before, they became my guests." 

I drove by Derrynane more than once, and once I visited the 
place — so interesting to all travelers as one of the historic sites of 
Ireland. It was after the " Liberator " had ceased to be a dweller 
on earth. 

The Irish are peculiarly sensitive to physical advantages ; and no 
doubt the personnel of O'Connell aided him much. I recall him ad- 
dressing a large assembly on a hill-side in Kerry. It was before 
Emancipation. I was not near enough to hear what he said, but I 
could note how he was " rollicking " — in words ; and for him how 
easy it would be to evoke an appalling storm ! Every man had in 



140 



'CONNELL. 



his " fist " the national weapon, and a very slight hint would have 
made him use it, heedless how, upon whom, or where. We know the 
story of the " boy " * who, seeing a distant fight, rushed into the 
melife, exclaiming, " O, the Lord grant I may take the right side ! " 
But O'Connell, though he often . led his factions to the brink, always 
stopped short of positive riot ; he knew its inutility as well as peril, 
and that " small blame " would be to the rifle-barrel out of which 
came a bullet that laid him low. I will believe, with Lord O'Hagan, 
that a better motive than personal fear led him to give such counsel. 
He seemed to sway the multitude by superhuman power ; often, 
there was a universal roar of laughter, succeeded by a sob that was 
equally unanimous. The very infants in arms appeared to dance 
with joy, or to respond in sorrow, as he willed to guide them. Lord 
O'Hagan, in the speech prepared for the " Centenary " (which he 
wrote but did not deliver, for the impatient audience, entirely Irish, 
would not hear reason, or bear to be lured into truth), described his 
mental qualifications justly : " He had limitless resources, a buoyant 
nature, unsleeping vigilance, untiring energy, patience inexhaustible, 
invention without bounds, faith in his cause which never faltered, 
and resolution which no reverse could daunt and no discouragement 
subdue. . . . He had humor and pathos, invective and argument, 
and he could pass from one to the other, sweeping across the human 
heart-strings with an astonishing facility and a sure response." Lord 
O'Hagan adds, " The generation which saw his majestic form, and 
heard his voice of music, is fast departing ! " f 

There are few who can remember O'Connell in the House, and it 
will now be difficult to credit the intemperance of language to which 
he gave way, not only when he was at home with his own audience, 
but in Parliament, where a very large majority of his hearers were 
hostile. Thus the Duke of Wellington was " a stunted corporal " 
(" Oh ! how hideous a thing it is that Ireland hath produced him ! ") ; 
Lord Alvanley, a "bloated buffoon"; Sir Henry Hardinge, "a 
wretched English scribe — a chance child of fortune and of war" ; 
Stanley was scorpion Stanley " ; Spring Rice, " small beer " ; Peel 
— a score of vituperative passages might be quoted to describe him 
as he appeared to O'Connell ; and as regards Disraeli, the language 

* In Ireland a " fine boy" is much what a " pretty man " is in the Highlands of 
Scotland. 

\ " Daniel O'Connell has great advantages of person — he has all that appearance 
of power which height and robust proportions invariably give to the orator, without 
being the least corpulent or fleshy, without coming under Cicero's anathema against 
the ' Vastus.' He has great girth of chest — stands firm as a rock ; his gestures are 
free, bold, and warm — his countenance plays with all he utters — his mouth in par- 
ticular indicates with great facility the passion of the moment — frank in conciliation, 
bitter in scorn. Indeed, the shape of the lips is rather a contradiction to the man- 
lier traits of the orator's fine, athletic person : it is pliable in character, delicate in 
outline." — New Monthly, 1831. 



O' CON NELL. I4I 

applied to him was so infamous that I do not quote it. Whether 
attacking them singly or in a body, he never hesitated to decry op- 
ponents in terms of abhorrence that engendered hatred. The Tories 
were always " detestable " ; the Whigs, when they refused his de- 
mands, were " base, brutal, and bloody " ; and at one of his meetings 
Parliament was cried down as an assemblage of " six hundred scoun- 
drels." Yet, of all men, O'Connell was one who should have most 
avoided the personal insults for which he would not give the " satis- 
faction " which few gentlemen declined at that period, when duels 
were a custom. His son Morgan on one occasion took up the quar- 
rel, and, as he had not " an oath in heaven," fought Lord Alvanley ; 
but the challenges of Sir Robert Peel, Sir Henry Hardinge, and Ben- 
jamin Disraeli, O'Connell refused to answer. Even now, it will be 
difficult to conceive the hatred with which he pursued every patriotic 
Irishman who was not willing to bear the chains that bound him to 
the wheels of the agitator's chariot. It is unjust to describe O'Con- 
nell as degraded when he depended — almost solely — on " the Rent " : 
no man ever earned better the " tribute " of the people. As unjust 
is it to arraign him as lacking manly courage, when, after having 
killed one man in a duel, he declined to fight another. 

His claim to " the Rent " was, according to his own view, this : 
that for twenty years before Emancipation he bore the burden of the 
cause ; " he had to arrange meetings, to carry on an enormous cor- 
respondence ; to examine all cases of practical grievances ; to rouse 
the torpid, to animate the lukewarm, to control the violent and in- 
flammatory ; to avoid the shoals and breakers of the law ; to guard 
against multiplied treachery ; and at all times to oppose at every 
peril the powerful and multitudinous enemies of the cause." It is 
needless to add that so much work could not have been done with- 
out enormous sacrifices. 

" ' Base, brutal, and bloody ' — such are the epithets the honorable 
and learned member for Dublin thinks it becoming to pour forth 
against the party to which he owes every privilege he enjoys." These 
are the words of Macaulay, who had stood — in the fight — so bravely 
by his side. And again (in 1833), when O'Connell taunted the Whigs, 
Macaulay replied, They were not deterred by clamor from making 
the learned gentleman not less than a British subject — he may be as- 
sured they will never suffer him to be more." 

O'Connell died on the 18th of May, 1847, bequeathing to his 
country the curse of " Repeal." It has been to Ireland what the 
shirt of Nessus was to Hercules. As regards any chance of Repeal, 
it is further distant now than it was in June, 1829, when O'Connell 
predicted that before three years were over there would be again a 
Parliament in College Green. Time after time, year after year, he 
thus " kept the word of promise to the ear." No one knew better 
than he that Repeal was as much an impossibility as would have 
been an attempt to move Ireland a thousand miles nearer to Amer- 



1 42 SHEIL. 

ica ; and none knew better that Repeal of the Union between the 
two countries would be to Ireland an inconceivable calamity. But 
let him bear — as he surely will bear to the end of time — the illustri- 
ous title of the Liberator. 

There are some — I hope and trust there are many — who will think 
I have done but scant justice to Daniel O'Connell. If his name is 
not forgotten, his policy is surely ignored, in Ireland. This is the 
language of one of his countrymen, of his own faith — Michael Do- 
herty : " There can be no doubt of the tendency of Mr. O'Connell's 
policy to demoralize, disgrace, enfeeble, and corrupt, the Irish peo- 
ple." 

Still less can I indorse the verdict of another of his countrymen, 
John Mitchel, some time M. P., who had a mighty " following " ; 
these are his words : 

" Poor old Dan ! — wonderful, mighty, jovial, and mean old man, with sil- 
ver tongue and smile of witchery, and heart of melting ruth — lying tongue, 
smile of treachery, heart of unfathomable fraud ! What a royal yet vulgar 
soul, with the keen eye and potent sweep of a generous eagle of Carran-Tual 
— with the base servility of a hound and the cold cruelty of a spider ! " 

Such are not, I rejoice to say, the opinions of " all Ireland " con- 
cerning him who was " the Liberator." There is a depth of infamy 
to which the " patriots " of to-day have reached, from which the 
great leader would have brought or forced them, as surely as he 
would have brought or forced them from the gates of Tophet. 

Sheil. — I knew O'Connell's countryman, fellow-worker, and rival 
(for he was that), Richard Lalor Sheil. I knew him before he was 
in Parliament ; when he had acquired repute at the bar, and ob- 
tained some literary fame as the author of a successful tragedy, 
" Evadne " — rendered successful by the acting of Miss O'Neil. It is 
now forgotten. He was certainly an orator, but he was not eloquent. 
There is a wide difference between the two — oratory and eloquence. 
His person was insignificant, and his voice inharmonious — squeaking 
is perhaps the only word that can describe it. Neither was he at all 
graceful in delivery : his motions were jerks, and his action was that 
of a man who wields a stick too heavy for his hand. He was seen 
to great disadvantage by the side of his burly colleague. I saw them 
together more than once in London, when addressing audiences to 
pave the way to the great work they ultimately accomplished. Sheil 
wrote his speeches, and, when he spoke, the fact was evident : though 
admirable as compositions, they lacked the furor that made O'Con- 
nell so magnificent in his outbursts. The incident is well known that 
at the great meeting on Penenden Heath, Sheil lost the copy of his 
speech, and stammered through it as best he could, while another 
copy was at the same moment in the hands of compositors in the Sun 



SHEIL . 1 4. 3 

printing-office, where it was printed entire, but by no means " as de- 
livered." 

It was in 1828 (October 24th) that the Protestant meeting on Pen- 
enden Heath took place, "to petition against Catholic Emancipa- 
tion." Sheil conceived the bold idea of putting in a personal ap- 
pearance, and remonstrating, on behalf of himself and the Roman 
Catholics of the nation, against " the meditated sentence of exclu- 
sion." He established his right to appear by previously purchasing 
a small freehold in the county of Kent. He was badly heard. To 
the shame of the men of Kent be it written — he was assailed by con- 
tinual clamor. 

I was present on that occasion as a reporter. Sheil did not 
" show " to advantage — as certainly O'Connell would have done. He 
had " lost the thread of his discourse," stammered often, and seemed 
alarmed at the hootings of a hostile crowd, which the noble chair- 
man did not exert himself to repress. On the platform he had few 
friends ; there was hardly one to encourage him. I was one of the 
few who did. He had missed his handkerchief when he sought to 
wipe the perspiration from his brow. I gave him mine, and said a 
word or two in giving it. Though a very small incident, it had the 
effect of making his voice louder. He uttered some sympathetic 
sentence which elicited a cheer, almost, if not quite, the only one he 
received on that eventful afternoon. But the speech as printed had 
great effect all over England, and largely aided the efforts of the up- 
holders of Catholic Emancipation.* 

This is Macready's portrait of him in 181 7 : "No one could have 
looked at Sheil and not have been struck with his singular physiog- 
nomy. A quick sense of the humorous and a lively fancy gave con- 
stant animation to his features, which were remarkable for their 
flexibility. His chin projected rather sharply, and his mouth was 
much indrawn. The pallor of his sunken cheek suggested a weak- 
ness of constitution, but lent additional luster to his large, deep-set 
eyes, that shone out with expression from underneath his massive 
overhanging brow." 

And this is Lord O'Hagan's portrait of him : " If you will con- 
sider a tin kettle battered about from place to place, producing a 
succession of sounds as it knocked first against one side and then 
against another — that is really one of the nearest approximations I 
can make to my remembrance of the voice of Mr. Sheil. . . . He 
was a great orator, and an orator of much preparation — I believe 
carried even to words — with a very vivid imagination, and an enor- 
mous power of language and of strong feeling. There was a peculiar 
character, a sort of half-wildness in. his aspect and delivery; and 

* Among other compliments he received for that speech, was one from Jeremy 
Bentham, who said, " So masterly a union of logic and rhetoric scarcely have I 
ever beheld." 



144 SHEIL. 

his whole figure and his delivery, and his voice and his manner, were 
all in such perfect keeping one with another, that they formed a 
great parliamentary picture." 

Sheil lived to be in office as Master of the Mint, and so " earned " 
the anathemas of a large section of his countrymen ; yet I do not 
think they went so far as to say he had sold himself to the Saxon, as 
they did of Lord O'Hagan, thirty years after the victory was gained, 
when a Roman Catholic was seated on the Irish woolsack — a result 
of victory as little contemplated by Sheil as would have been the 
conversion of Ireland into an empire. 

In 1 82 1 there was a memorable quarrel between O'Connell and 
Sheil. O'Connell had issued an address to the Catholics of Ireland. 
Sheil (a Catholic) wrote an answer to it, " pointing out the pernicious 
tendency of that advice," styling his address "an ill-constructed 
fabric of despair," and sneering down to the common level the chief 
Irishman of the age : all of which O'Connell condemned as " rhap- 
sody," and Sheil as an " iambic rhapsodist," describing the address 
altogether as " peacock's feathers and volcanoes which glitter in 
tamboured and puny conceits." 

It was " a very pretty quarrel," but the coming of the King to 
Ireland placed it in abeyance. That they were rivals from the be- 
ginning, and cordially hated each other, there is little doubt. 

Yet Sheil was " rejected " when he sought to represent his native 
county in Parliament ; and he first appeared in the House of Com- 
mons as the representative of an English borough. He died in 185 1, 
and his country seems to have forgotten him : his name is rarely 
mentioned when patriots are casting up accounts, and claiming debts 
of the Past. I do not think there is in Ireland a monument to his 
memory, or aught that is " national " to preserve the name of so re- 
markable a man. 

His most triumphant speech in the House was that in which he 
referred to the unworthy language of Lord Lyndhurst, who, in his 
" alien speech," described the Irish as " aliens in race, aliens in 
language, aliens in religion." Parliament has listened to few grander 
outbursts than the appeal of Sheil to the Iron Duke, who heard the 
slander and had said nothing : who " ought to have remembered," 
cried the orator, " whose were the arms that drove your bayonets at 
Vimiera through the phalanxes that never before reeled in the shock 
of war? What desperate valor climbed the steeps and filled the 
moats at Badajos ? Partakers in every peril — in the glory shall we 
not be permitted to participate ; and shall we be told as a requital 
that we are estranged from the noble country for whose salvation 
our life-blood was poured out ? " Lord Lyndhurst was present, and 
must have bitterly rued the expressions to which he had, in an un- 
happy moment, given utterance. 

" Aliens ! " literally screamed the orator, as he waved his hand 



SIR CHARLES WETHERELL. 



145 



toward the spot where Lyndhurst was sitting. The House was con- 
vulsed with cheers and exclamations, and for the moment the ora- 
tory of Richard Lalor Sheil blazed up into a supremacy of power it 
never before or afterward attained. Though " Evadne " has per- 
ished, that single mastery oration must long keep the memory green 
of him who uttered it. 

Sheil is accused of English proclivities ; probably of that " crime " 
he was guilty. His first wife was a Protestant — the niece of Mc- 
Mahon, Master of the Rolls. His early education was English ; he 
was at school at Kensington from his eleventh to his fourteenth year 
(1802 to 1804). The school was known as Kensington House School 
of the " Peres de la Foi." * 

Toward the close of his life, Sheil became British Minister at 
Florence, and died there in May, 1851. 

Lawyers in the House. — It is needless to say that among the 
more prominent leaders in the House were those who led at the Bar. 
The legal luminaries of fifty years back were more remarkable men 
than their successors of to-day. Passing over the Lord Chancellor 
Eldon, of whom I have written elsewhere, after Brougham came 
" silver-tongued Denman " (very opposites they were), and Sir James 
Scarlet (Lord Abinger), and smart Sergeant Wilde (Lord Truro). 
Still, the genius of the Bar, in so far as it was known to power and 
the public, was limited to half a dozen shining lights. The majority, 
King's Counsel and Sergeants-at-Law, were no doubt sound law- 
yers, but that was all. Such, for example, was Marryatt, a ser- 
geant who — foremost in the van in superior courts — was counsel in 
an action for nuisance, brought by a client who complained of an- 
noyance and injury from the smoke of a neighbor's factory. " My 
Lord," declared Marryatt, " there were volumes of smoke ! Volumes 
did I say ? My Lord, there were encyclopedias of smoke ! " I heard 
him utter the words. The court was convulsed with laughter, for, 
though a sound lawyer, Marryatt was a singularly dull and heavy 
man, without a sparkle of eloquence or wit. 

Sir Charles Wetherell. — Among the men who were great in 
Parliament and renowned at the Bar may be named Sir Charles 
Wetherell, some time Solicitor and Attorney-General, who, though 
the highest of high Tories, regarded the customs of society as un- 
wholesome restraints, and considered freedom, whether of actions or 

* Kensington House School had been the suburban residence of one of the 
mistresses of Charles II. It was well situated, having a garden, and at the rear 
a pleasure-ground with a fine walk of trees, affording a delightful play-ground. 
This school was established and owned by a son of the Marshal Due de Broglie, 
the famous War Minister of Louis XVI. This son, who was always called " Prince 
de Broglie," was educated for the army, but during the emigration became a priest 
in Germany, and afterward opened this school in London for his support. 



146 DEN MAN. 

of words, the natural right of man. I can only describe the personal 
appearance of Wetherell by saying that he looked as if, nightly, he 
went to bed in his clothes and seldom thought of a bath. He ap- 
peared never to have used braces, and seemed as if — not his stock- 
ings but — his trousers were " down at heel." Tall and gaunt, yet 
weak in the back, when he spoke, whether in serious mood or in 
lighter badinage, he always produced an effect greater than that of 
greater men ; few members commanded more attention in the House. 
He was often witty as well as serious, and is undoubtedly to be 
classed with the men of mark of the period. Brougham writes of 
him as " one of the most honest and independent men I have ever 
known." 

High in the list of statesmen-lawyers I may place Sir James 
Scarlett, Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench. I seem to see him 
now : a portly person with the face of a young girl — florid, but not 
red ; looking as if he had never burned a night-lamp, but was made 
prosperous by acting up to the lesson taught in those days : 

" Early to bed, and early to rise, 
Make a man healthy, wealthy, and wise." 

It was far otherwise, however, with Sir James Scarlett, who must 
have toiled early and late, " lived laborious days," to attain and so 
long keep the premier rSle in his profession. There is one word, 
perhaps, that will convey an idea of his character : he was crafty. 
No man knew better how to convince a judge and cajole a jury ; and 
no man was ever more successful in managing both. His peculiar 
knack was to persuade listeners that his reasons and arguments were 
such as admitted of no doubts ; and he obtained the nickname of 
the "verdict-getter." He who had Scarlett for his counsel was more 
than half-way to a favorable verdict before his case commenced. 
When he " retired " to the King's Bench as Lord Chief Justice, he 
relinquished for the honor of the high appointment a large profes- 
sional income. 



" Denman of the silver tongue " was a man whose outward ap- 
pearance brought conviction that, if skilled, by great natural gifts, 
" to make the worse appear the better reason," he was a lawyer in 
whom might be placed implicit trust. His eloquence was calm, per- 
suasive, and impressive, rarely impassioned, as it so continually was 
with his great rival and ally, Henry Brougham. It seemed as if Den- 
man would have rejected any verdict he did not himself consider 
based on judgment and rule of right. In short, he gave the impres- 
sion of a thoroughly upright man, in whom a client with a good cause 
might have unlimited trust, but from whose hands an unscrupulous, 
dishonest, or merciless litigant, plaintiff or defendant, had better, for 



SERGEANT WILDE. 



H7 



his own sake, withdraw his brief. He became Lord Chief Justice in 
1832, and was created Baron Denman in 1834. 

Pollock — Chief Baron — had not the personal advantages that 
Denman possessed, but he was a sounder lawyer, more trusted by 
the attorneys, and a safer advocate to conduct a case — wrong or 
right. He made little figure in the House of Commons, but a better 
judge never graced the Bench. He was most estimable in all the re- 
lations of private life ; and in his rising fortunes remembered, to 
their gain, the friends and associates of his somewhat obscure boy- 
hood ; he is one of the many men of whom Scotland is justly proud. 

Both Denman and Pollock have sons now on the Bench, of whom 
future historians will write as I write of their fathers. 

Sir John Campbell. — Sir John — " plain John Campbell," as, at 
one period of his life, he coveted to be called — Lord Campbell, as he 
became — Lord High Chancellor of Ireland, and subsequently Lord 
High Chancellor of England — has written volume after volume con- 
cerning his predecessors on the woolsack. How it was received by 
his contemporaries — two or three of them, at all events — I have else- 
where shown. 

He was great at Nisi Prius, but nowhere else. As a leader he 
was less successful with a jury than he was with a judge : it was not 
in his nature to be persuasive ; no advocate was ever less studious of 
bonhomie. As a speaker he was the opposite of eloquent, although 
he seldom failed to produce conviction — often obtained when re- 
luctantly given. 

A Scotchman, but hardly a good specimen of his country, he has 
not left a favorable impression even in Scotland, so proverbially 
proud of its great men. 

His biographies of the Chancellors and Chief Justices hold promi- 
nent places on the shelves of all libraries. Campbell had that worst 
of qualifications for a biographer — a total lack of enthusiasm for the 
hero of whom he wrote. There was not only nothing sympathetic or 
generous about him : he seemed to consider as enemies and rivals 
both the men of the past and those of the present, and deemed it a 
duty, in treating of them, to magnify faults and dwindle virtues to 
specks. 

Sergeant Wilde (Lord Truro). — His very opposite was Ser- 
geant Wilde, Attorney-General, Lord Chief Justice of the Common 
Pleas, and Lord High Chancellor of England. Proud positions for 
any man to occupy, but singular in his case, for he had neither the 
natural nor the acquired advantages that go far to assure success. 
His personal appearance was not in his favor, and to eloquence he 
had no pretense. He was a sound lawyer in all minor technicalities, 
but had no large view of anything. His second wife, Augusta Emma 



148 



LA WYERS. 



d'Este, was a daughter of the Duke of Sussex. In allusion to that 
marriage, Sergeant Murphy, a prominent and witty wag of the period, 
whose wits were often out when the wine was in, proposed a toast at 
a public dinner — " Mr. Sergeant Wilde and the rest of the Royal 
Family." 

Is it possible to attain great eminence as a lawyer without sacri- 
fice of the moral principle ? Can a man uphold, maintain, and prop- 
agate what is false, and what he knows to be false, without perma- 
nent mental taint ? Can it leave his nature without soil — that he 
should perpetually strive to make 

" The worse appear the better reason " ? 

At best, descending to labor in the service of wrong while striving to 
persuade a jury that he is an advocate in the cause of right ; surely, 
he puts aside conscientiousness for a time, and resigns self-respect, 
to follow the guidance and dictation of his brief ; and acts accord- 
ing to " instructions " when he labors to render injustice powerful 
and successful, and crime unrestrained and free. 

Has there ever been a case so atrociously bad that no attorney 
could be found to prepare it, and no barrister to carry it into 
court ? 

A few years ago I was playing chess with one of the most esti- 
mable and upright men I have ever known — and I knew him from 
his boyhood — a late Master of the Rolls in Ireland. He was playing 
badly, and I told him so. " Yes," he said ; " I am anxious for a 
messenger who is to bring me the verdict of a jury I left deliberat- 
ing. I expect I shall get a verdict, although I am pretty certain my 
client perjured himself." I could not help exclaiming, " Is it possi- 
ble you can wish for a verdict in favor of a person who has been 
guilty of perjury ? " " Yes ! " he answered ; " such is professional 
esprit." 

A distinguished lawyer told me that he had said to his client, 
about to be tried for murder : " It is essential that I should know the 
truth in this case ; but I can have no confession. If you are inno- 
cent, take my hand ; if you are guilty, put yours into your pocket." 
The accused did the latter. He was defended and acquitted. 

I knew well a barrister who defended a client he knew to be 
guilty, who was tried with another man he knew to be inno- 
cent. [I had the story from his own lips.] He succeeded so ill 
that both were convicted — his client, who had committed the mur- 
der, and an unfortunate man, a peddler, who was by accident stand- 
ing in the gateway of the house in which it was done, and to whom 
the murderer had tendered some trifle as a gift. 

Horrified at what had happened, he communicated, after sen- 
tence, the whole of the circumstances to the judge, and succeeded so 
far that, although the actual culprit was hanged, the sentence of the 



LA WYERS. I4 g 

other was commuted to transportation for life. The incident haunt- 
ed the memory of the lawyer to the day of his death. 

I remember a case tried at the Old Bailey that illustrates the 
danger of trying to prove too much. A prisoner was indicted for 
stealing some goslings from a farm-yard. A little girl swore they 
were her mother's goslings. Now as goslings are all much alike, if 
the counsel had left the evidence there, his client would have been 
safe enough ; but he did not : he pressed her to answer the question, 
" How she knew they were her mother's goslings ? " After some 
hesitation she answered, " Well, sir, you see when the goslings were 
brought back the goose ran to the goslings, and the goslings ran to 
the goose ! " The jury at once accepted the testimony of Nature 
and convicted the accused. 

One other anecdote I may relate ; it was told me, if I remember 
rightly, by Chief-Justice Doherty. At some Irish assizes a man was 
tried for murder. The case was so clear as to leave not a shadow of 
doubt concerning the verdict ; the charge of the judge was emphatic 
for conviction : the man's life was not worth a " traneen." To the 
surprise of the court, the jury retired to consider, and in half an hour 
returned with a verdict of acquittal ; and would give no other in 
spite of the judge's protest. Next day the lawyer who defended the 
prisoner chanced to meet the foreman of the jury, and addressed 
him. " Of course, I was well pleased with the result of yesterday ; 
but how, in the name of goodness, could you have arrived at such a 
verdict ? " This was the answer : " Arrah ! Counselor, do you think 
I'd be after hanging the last life in my lease ? " So it actually was : 
the man had got himself named foreman of the jury for the purpose 
he had accomplished.* 

Yes, I have been many times in court during my reporting days 
— in civil and in criminal courts — when a wicked plaintiff or defend- 
ant obtained a verdict against a thoroughly honest man, or a widow 
and orphans were made the victims of a scoundrel, aided by a skill- 
ful lawyer, who, having undertaken the case, was bound to do his 
best for his client, although he knew full well that he was the advo- 
cate of injustice and guilt. 

All this is but an episode. 

I ought, no doubt, to apologize for introducing the topic into 
these pages, the more especially as some of the most conscientious 

* In those days it was by no means uncommon in Ireland — in fact, it was al- 
most a rule — when a landlord let a farm on a lease of lives, that one of these lives 
should be his own, and another that of his eldest son. In Dublin City, sixty years 
ago, there flourished a barrister who was not too proud to accept any fee offered — 
too needy to refuse any. He took half-crowns for opinion or advice, and was 
known as the " half-crown lawyer." He was summoned before the Benchers and 
duly charged with the outrageous offense. This was his answer : " Gentlemen, as 
to the charge urged against me, I have this answer — I can prove to you I acted up 
to the very spirit of the profession — / took all the man had ! " 



i5o 



LORD LYTTON. 



and upright men that ever lived have been, and are, largely employed 
solicitors and extensively practicing barristers. 

The First Lord Lytton. — I have choice whether to recall this 
distinguished man to memory as Mr. Lytton Bulwer, Sir Lytton Bul- 
wer-Lytton, or Lord Lytton — for I knew him when he was undistin- 
guished by any title, when he was created a baronet in recognition 
of his genius, and when, after having been Colonial Secretary, he be- 
came a peer of the realm. I prefer to introduce him here, as a 
member of the House of Commons and the House of Lords. 

The first time I saw him was in the year 1826. There then lived 
on the second floor of a house in Quebec Street, Marylebone, a 
Miss Spence — a "blue" when woman-authorship was rare, and was 
in some cases considered a glory, in others an offense. The term 
" blue-stocking " was morally an epithet of reproach. The little 
lady — she was very little, and almost as broad as she was tall — had 
no pretensions to ability, but she had printed a book, " Letters from 
the Mountains," a sort of rambling tour in Scotland. She contrived 
to attract to her " humble abode " (as she phrased it in all her notes 
of invitation) many persons eminent in literature and art. Her 
" abode " consisted of two rooms : in the bedroom (back) the tea 
was made ; and in front, the drawing-room, her guests assembled. 
There were more ambitious types of Mrs. Leo Hunter, but Miss 
Spence was the model of one who, aiming at patronage in small 
things, succeeded in doing what more elevated ladies desired to do, 
but failed to accomplish.* 

On the occasion to which I refer, the leading lioness was Lady 
Caroline Lamb : a poor-looking passie woman, who, it is said, had 
captivated the heart of Byron, and was the " toast " of other celeb- 

* An amusing story is told of one of them, I forget which, but blue-stocking 
parties were in fashion at the time, and I am not sure whether the anecdote has or 
has not been printed. During the struggle between Greece and Turkey, a some- 
what renowned Greek leader arrived in the Downs. A lady who was to have a 
" gathering " the following evening heard the news, and posted off to Chatham, to 
secure the presence of a lion so novel and desirable. She went on board the ship, 
and expressed exceeding delight when her purpose was attained, and the Greek 
chieftain consented to be of her party, duly habited of course in his native costume. 
When, however, she sought to leave the vessel with her prize, she was informed 
that the ship was in quarantine ; and that neither she nor her prize could leave it 
without a properly certified order. The result was that at her " evening " neither 
the lady nor the Greek put in appearance. I may print here ajeu d' esprit of James 
Smith, one of the authors of " Rejected Addresses," which he gave me as an 
autograph : 

" Cselia publishes with Murray, 
Cupid's ministry is o'er, 
Lovers vanish in a hurry ; 
She writes, she writes, boys : 
Ward off shore ! " 



LORD LYTTON. 



151 



rities, not very nice as to qualifications derived from either beauty 
or virtue. She never could have been remarkable for personal at- 
tractions. She was accompanied by a young medical man, who was 
in fact her " keeper," in a professional sense, and seldom left her 
side. I saw him more than once — when Lady Caroline was rattling 
on and approaching some tabooed topic — quiet her by a look. Her 
ladyship was also accompanied by a young and singularly beautiful 
lady, whose form and features were then as near perfection as art, 
or even fancy, could conceive them. Lively, vivacious, with a ready, 
if not a brilliant, word to say to every member of the assembly : dis- 
playing marvelous grace in all her movements : yet cast in a mold 
that indicated great physical strength ; she received in full measure 
the admiration she evidently coveted, and did her utmost to obtain. 
Her abundant hair fell over the whitest of shoulders ; her complex- 
ion was the happiest mixture of white and red ; in fact, she was as 
perfect a realization of the beauty whose charm is of the form, and 
not of the spirit, as poet ever set forth in words or painter upon 
canvas. 

It was not difficult, however, to perceive in this handsome young 
invader of Miss Spence's drawing-room something that gave dis- 
quieting intimations concerning the spirit that looked out from her 
brilliant eyes — that he who wooed her would probably be a happier 
man if content to regard her as we do some beautiful caged wild 
creature of the woods — at a safe and secure distance. The young 
lady of whom I have thus spoken was Miss Rosina Wheeler, not long 
afterward Mrs. Lytton Bulwer.* 

By her side, and seldom absent from it during the whole of the 
evening, was a young man whose features, though of a somewhat 
effeminate cast, were remarkably handsome. His bearing had that 
aristocratic something bordering on hauteur, which clung to him 
during his life. I never saw the famous writer without being re- 
minded of the passage, " Stand back : I am holier than thou." Mr. 

* Mr. Bulwer married Rosina, only surviving daughter of Francis Massey 
Wheeler, Esq., of Lizard Conel, Limerick, grandson of Hugh, Lord Massey, by 
Anna, daughter of Archdeacon Doyle. Thus Rosina Bulwer was an Irish lady, 
with very many of the advantages that make the women of Ireland charming. But 
she did not take pride in the distinction. During his editorship of the New 
Monthly, Bulwer gave a dinner-paity to O'Connell and several Irish members. I 
was not present ; but the next day I saw Mrs. Bulwer directing some arrangements 
in the dining-room, which she told me she was fumigating in order to get rid of 
the brogue. 

In March, 1882, died Rosina, Dowager Lady Lytton, at her residence at Syden- 
ham, in the seventy-ninth year of her age. I had not seen her for many years 
prior to her death : I wonder whether she retained her beauty ? There is a beauty 
of age as there is a beauty of youth ; but its source can only be in a pure, loving, 
and sympathetic soul. 

" Such beauty counts not years, but laughs at time ; 
Such beauty will be always in its prime." 



152 



LORD LYTTON. 



Lytton Bulwer was then in the dawning of that fame, to the full 
meridian of which he afterward attained — at the foot of that steep 
which led to the "proud temple," and, to carry on the simile of the 
poet, anticipating and dreading nothing of the " malignant star " that 
was soon to shed its blighting influence upon his life. I can not 
feel myself at liberty to continue this topic. A wedding that, to all 
appearances, was the union of a pair as distinguished by mutual 
affection as personal graces, resulted only in bitter misery. That 
is all I need say of the marriage of the afterward Lord Lytton. 
During my frequent intercourse with Bulwer, in the year 1832 — 
when I was his sub-editor of the New Monthly Magazine — it is need- 
less to say I saw much of his domestic life. That I pass over with- 
out detail or comment. As is usually the case, the faults were on 
both sides : on the one there was no effort — no thought, indeed, to 
make home a throne or a sanctuary — a source of triumph or of con- 
solation ; on the other there seemed the indifference that arises from 
satiety. In many respects the sexes might have been changed to 
the advantage of both. Yet, although they were unequally yoked 
together, I doubt if either would have made happy, or been happy 
with, any other man or any other woman. 

But I am drifting into a subject concerning which I have, per- 
haps, already said more than enough. Although Lady Lytton has 
made the theme, in a measure, common property by the publication 
of books that do not affect concealment as to the parties exposed, 
condemned, or traduced ; they are evil books, and add certainly to 
Bulwer's life the suffering they were designed to inflict. They poi- 
soned, and were meant to poison, the cup of prosperity of which he 
drank. 

When I saw Bulwer in 1826 he was barely twenty years old, but 
had already given promise of distinction, having in 1825 gained the 
Chancellor's prize medal at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He had also 
produced a book called " Falkland," which in after-years he seemed 
anxious to forget. 

Like almost every great man, he was indebted to his mother for 
his greatness. Of his father, General Bulwer, we learn nothing ; but 
his mother must have been a lady who possessed a large mind and 
natural ability of a high order. She was heiress of the Lyttons of 
Knebworth, and Bulwer, her favorite son, inherited her wealth, and 
at her death in 1843 assumed the name of which she was always 
proud — that of Lytton. Mrs. Bulwer was tall and slight, of a com- 
manding presence : silent — it was thought from pride. She certainly 
conveyed to me the idea that she lived too much with her ancestors. 
That her celebrated son was devotedly attached to her is certain. 
On that head it will suffice to copy a letter, which fortunately I pre- 
served, written by Bulwer to Mrs. Hall soon after his mother's death. 
It is a fine and touching tribute to her memory — evidence of a grati- 
tude beyond that which is a claim of nature. It runs as follows : 



LORD LYTTON. 



153 



" My dear Mrs. Hall : 

"Believe me grateful for your kind sympathy and condolence, and sin- 
cerely grieved to hear you anticipate an affliction similar to my own — an af- 
fliction for which no preparation prepares — which is never known in its vast 
irreparable extent — till all is over. Do not talk to me of that hateful, bitter 
thing called Literature — the vying with little men which shall be calumniated 
the most. No generous mind ever cared for the brawls and broils of reputa- 
tion, but as their result pleased some other. Who can take — not laurels 
(nowadays there are no such things) — third editions and Quarterly Reviews 
to the grave ? From my head the great shelter-roof of life is gone. It may 
be mine to succor others — the sole being who succored me is no more. The 
tie that is rent was not the common one, holy as it always is, between child 
and parent. In that tie were enwoven half the links that make life endurable. 
My mother proud of me ! — no, I was proud of her. All I have gained, all I 
have, were hers — education, knowledge, the little good, the little talent, that 
may be mine, all are but feeble emanations from the most powerful mind, the 
greatest heart, I ever knew. No one understood her as I did, and in the 
bitterest moments of my grief I have felt that I never mourned her enough — 
a mourning nevertheless that my heart will wear till it cease to beat. God 
grant that your own fears may not be realized, and that you may be long 
spared the anguish for which, in me, fortitude is a vain pretense and comfort 
a hollow word ! 

" Yours faithfully, 

" E. B. Lytton. 

" Hertford Street, 
" Monday." 

I am not about to write a memoir of Lord Lytton,* although that 
has yet to be done, and ought to be done — is being done by the 
present Lord Lytton. Into the reasons of delay it is not my business 
to inquire. I doubted its appearance until one of the causes of post- 
ponement was removed by death — that difficulty no longer exists. 
My duty is to confine myself to personal recollections. 

Latterly I saw little of the author of " Pelham," of whom at one 

* Although barely worth preserving, I copy some lines written by Sir Lytton 
Bulwer in Mrs. Hall's album. It was Mrs. Hall's plan to avoid as far as possible 
the introduction of original contributions into it ; partly because album verses are 
bad, and also because a needless tax is levied on the author. Sir Lytton wrote : 
" An album — it's really my curse ! 

I've no great acquaintance with verse : 

And prose, that dull dog in a bevy 

Of poems, looks awkward and heavy. 

Howbeit — there is not a muse 

Who dares what you ask her refuse. 

When I went up to Cambridge for knowledge, 

The Hall was eclipsed by the College ; 

But now every pedant acknowledges 

That a Hall beats the best of our Colleges. 

Some still for distinction may look 

When enrolled in a College's book, 

But those who want envy from all 

Are enrolled in the books of a Hall. 
"■March 25, 1835." " E. L. Bulwer. 



154 LORD LYTTON. 

period, but only for a brief period, I knew much. I believe Bulwer 
to have been a man made to be admired rather than loved. He 
achieved fame, but I am not sure that it brought him happiness. He 
seldom gave one the idea that he was in earnest : the good he did 
seemed rather the result of calculation than of impulse. I believe 
there would have been even among his friends and admirers a greater 
number to rejoice at his failure than triumph at his success. Had 
his earlier life been different from what it was, his prime arid his 
decline might — I think would — have presented another picture. A 
married man must ask his wife if he is to be loved and respected, 
and if she says, " No," he will strive in vain to be either. It is sel- 
dom out of the power of a good woman so to mold her husband that 
he may be both. 

" Men are what women make them : Age and Youth 

Bear witness to that grand — Eternal — truth ; 

They steer the bark o'er Destiny's dark wave, 

And guide us from the cradle to the grave." 

In the secret and sacred precincts of home, hypocrisy is impossible. 
The valet must know the outer man, the wife the inner — the height 
and depth of the heart, mind, and soul ! 

Of the great gifts of Edward George Bulwer Lytton, Baron Lyt- 
ton, I need not write, were I even able to produce that which a 
reader would care to read. Tributes in abundance were laid upon 
the mausoleum that received his body among the illustrious dead in 
Westminster Abbey. There was not a newspaper in the kingdom 
but contributed to swell the total of laudation. He will assuredly be 
forever classed with the chief writers of his generation as one who 
has delighted, and will delight while the language lasts, the millions 
who read and speak the Anglo-Saxon tongue. And not that only : 
his works have been translated into every European language. 
" Poet, essayist, statesman, novelist, scholar, dramatist," these titles 
all are his — 

"... who ran 
Through each mode of the lyre, and was master of all." 

His only living child, Edward Robert Lytton, second Lord Lyt- 
ton, was favorably known in literature under the name of " Owen 
Meredith," previous to his father's death ; but, in all human proba- 
bility, that father had little idea that he would — justly and rightly — 
hold the third highest place under the Crown, earn an Earldom, and 
become Governor-General of our Indian Empire. 

Lord Lytton's parliamentary speeches were collected by his son. 
It is by no means certain that " they will remain marvels of the high- 
est and noblest eloquence," as his friend Lord Chief-Justice Cockburn 
said they would ; but they are admirable as compositions, powerful, 
argumentative, manifesting the liberal and generous sentiments which 
he nourished in early life and cherished to the last. 



LORD LYTTON. 



155 



Bulwer could hardly be said to entertain settled political opinions. 
It is sufficiently notorious that he began life — politically — as a Lib- 
eral of very advanced type, and, in fact, sought to enter Parliament 
under Radical banners. I can never imagine him soliciting the 
" most sweet voices " of the multitude otherwise than with awkward 
constraint — as a gentleman out of his sphere. He was too proud a 
man to be " a vain man," yet at all times he took pains to enhance 
the value of his personal appearance, and did not disdain artificial 
aids ; what is termed " the simplicity of nature," in thought, word, 
or deed, being utterly foreign to his disposition. He was thoroughly 
an aristocrat ; all his affinities were with his " order," although he 
sought, and thought, to connect himself with the hard-handed men 
of the working classes. I could fancy him scrupulously washing his 
hands after a meeting with his constituents — where he had been con- 
demned to exchange greetings with them. He could scarcely have 
done that which, undoubtedly, he would have preferred to do — put 
on his gloves before he entered a meeting of Radicals. 

Reluctance to oppose Mr. Calvert made him decline to contest 
the borough of Southwark, which he was eagerly solicited to do by 
a large body of its inhabitants. The following is an extract from his 
first declaration of public faith : 

" I should have founded my pretensions, had I addressed myself to your 
notice, upon that warm and hearty sympathy in the great interests of the 
people, which even as in my case, without the claim of a long experience or 
the guarantee of a public name, you have so often, and I must add, so lauda- 
bly, esteemed the surest and the highest recommendation to your favor. 
And, gentlemen, to the eager wish, I will not hesitate to avow that I should 
have added the determined resolution to extend and widen, in all their chan- 
nels, those pure and living truths which can alone circulate through the vast 
mass of the community — that political happiness so long obstructed from the 
many, and so long adulterated even for the few." 

The last time I saw him was at his then residence, No. 12 Gros- 
venor Square. It was drawing toward fifty years since first we had 
met, and there were more changes in him than those that time usu- 
ally brings. His once handsome face had assumed the desolation 
without the dignity of age. His locks — once brown, inclining to 
auburn — were shaggy and grizzled ; his mouth, seldom smiling even 
in youth, was close shut ; his whole aspect had something in it at 
once painful and unpleasant. 

His industry was wonderful. I have known him write an article 
for the New Monthly overnight, which I well knew he had not 
touched before late in the evening, but which was ready in the morn- 
ing when I called for it. As I have elsewhere stated, during the 
year 1832 he was editor and I sub-editor of the New Monthly Maga- 
zine. Previous to that year he had for some time ranked as " the 
best esteemed " of its contributors. His ability as an editor was by 



156 LORD LYTTON. 

no means equal to his capacity as a contributor. His sensitiveness 
to blame or ridicule was extreme, and at times this tenderness of 
mental nerve caused him suffering that amounted to agony. In 1831 
— a short time before he became editor of the New Monthly — a 
highly laudatory article appeared in that magazine upon his literary 
career ; it was written by Miss Landon. The wasps of Fraser turned 
this opportunity to malicious account, and stung their victim to the 
quick. The New Monthly sketch was published in May, 1831. In 
Fraser for July appeared an article, assuming to be from the pen of 
Bulwer himself, and comparing it to the gross devices resorted to by 
puffers of quack medicines and other enterprising advertisers. The 
climax of insult was reached in December of the same year, under 
the heading of " Epistles to the Literati," when an attack was made 
upon Bulwer, the scurrility and grossness of which no magazine, 
however careless of its reputation, would at the present day dare to 
parallel. 

There are seasons in the life of every literary man in which si- 
lence is golden. Assuredly the season of these Fraser lampoons was 
such a one as regards Bulwer. He, however, exasperated beyond 
endurance, lost patience and rushed angrily into print. 

It is hardly necessary for me to say that the ventilation of his 
private grievances in the pages of the magazine was strongly opposed 
to my view. But he was the editor ; I was the sub-editor, bound by 
a duty of obedience as much as is the soldier ordered to ascend a 
fort, which he does promptly without a murmur, though with cer- 
tainty of failure and death. 

Part of Bulwer's reply ran as follows : 

" Our readers may be aware that there exists a stupid, coarse, illiterate 
periodical, published once a month, and called Fraser s Magazine. We 
mention the paltry thing, because it sometimes happens that lies travel 
abroad, from the mouth even of the obscurest liar, and the poor creatures 
connected with the periodical referred to, have been pleased to render them- 
selves contemptible by uttering several falsehoods respecting us. In one of 
these falsehoods it is asserted that Mr. Bulwer has ' long anonymously edited 
the New Monthly Magazine! We will simply state in reply to this asser- 
tion, that Mr. Bulwer had not the smallest connection, direct or indirect, with 
the editorship of the New Monthly Magazine previous to the November 
number ; and that he had not even been a contributor to the work for sev- 
eral months anterior to the last. So much for Fraser s Magazine. The 
falsehood we have exposed is but one among many ! What a pitiful thing is 
a work calling itself literary that seeks to delude the public by such poor 
frauds and despicable falsities — that panders to the worst of passions by the 
paltriest of means, and hopes to struggle into sale by the tricks of the swin- 
dler and the lies of the beggar ! We heartily trust that this notice may encour- 
age such enemies I in their abuse and their slander. ' There are two ways,' 
says a wise writer, ' of establishing a reputation — to be praised by honest men, 
and to be abused by rogues.' Whatever success we may have in the former 
mode of establishing a reputation, we are sure, at least, of success in the lat- 
ter, so long as we are honored by the writers in Fraser 's Magazine with that 



LORD LYTTON. 



157 



' calumniation which is not only the greatest benefit a rogue can bestow upon 
us, but also the only service he will perform for nothing.' * 

He failed to see, at the time, though he may possibly have done 
so afterward, that an outburst of spleen so ill-judged simply afforded 
to his assailants evidence that the barbed arrows they launched at 
him had penetrated, and that the wounds inflicted rankled and fes- 
tered. For years he continued to be of all English authors the one 
whom satirists most delighted to select as a target for their shafts of 
wit and malice.f From time to time, he made efforts to defend him- 
self, which were, however, too labored and heated to be effective. 
He suffered from even the most contemptible lampoon — so keenly 
sensitive was he — and when really formidable adversaries took the 
field the anguish of soul he endured could scarcely have been in- 
creased. Had he resolutely kept silence, the malicious attacks di- 
rected against him must in time have ceased. Unfortunately he did 
not follow that course, and at each new cry of anguish to which the 
tormented gave vent — in prose or verse — the clouds of wasps that 
buzzed about him stung more spitefully than before. 

Under his editorship the circulation of the New Monthly declined 
rapidly. At the end of a year he and Colburn parted, and from that 
time until his death I saw comparatively little of him. He discarded 
his Radical politics, became a Conservative — of a slightly Liberal 
type — and rose rapidly in celebrity and dignity, being in no long 
time created a baronet, and attaining some years before his death to 
the honors of the peerage. His extreme sensitiveness must have 
seriously obstructed his power in the House of Commons, and no 
doubt greatly lessened his value when, as a member of the Govern- 
ment, he held the important post of Colonial Secretary. He was cer- 
tainly without proof-armor wherewith to encounter assailants in the 
House of Commons. I can believe his duties were distasteful to him ; 
while in his brother Henry (afterward Lord Dalling) diplomacy had 
one of its ablest sustainers. Moreover, the deafness which at that 
time and afterward afflicted him must have greatly diminished his 
readiness. Yet, although not an orator, he was an eloquent speaker : 
though by no means a ready debater, for all his speeches were pre- 
pared beforehand. So early as 1828 I accompanied him when he 
was to advocate at a public meeting the removal of " Taxes on 

* " Some time or other, when we have nothing better to do, we shall for the 
honor of Literature, devote a few pages to the unburrowing of some half a dozen 
of these vermin — the Mactoddies and Macgrawlers of Mr. Fraser's fetid magazine, 
and we think we can promise our reader that he shall both ridicule and loathe — 
and while disgusted with the blackguard, he shall enjoy a hearty laugh at the fool." 

f The chief offender was Thackeray, who in the " Yellowplush Correspond- 
ence " assailed him with a degree of rancor utterly opposed to the fair spirit of 
criticism. It will suffice to indicate the spirit of the article if I quote a single word 
— the name given to the accomplished author as it was spelt in the " Diary of 
Jeames de la Pliiche, Esq." : " Sawedwadgeorgeearllittnbulwig." 



158 LORD LYTTON. 

Knowledge." His speech even on that occasion was carefully pre- 
pared. 

Though classed, not unwisely nor unjustly, among the loftiest 
men of the generation, Bulwer coveted something more — which 
never was his. The hart that panteth after the water-brooks is indif- 
ferent to green trees and refreshing breezes. He was a man more 
to be admired than loved ; the sentiments he excited were not those 
of affection ; if he aimed at popularity, it was not by winning his 
way through the heart. Many men vastly his inferiors in intellectual 
and personal gifts, and in other advantages that are great in the race 
for fame and fortune, left him far behind. 

Dickens, at the dinner to Macready, said of Bulwer : * 

" He had uniformly found him, from the first, the most generous of men, 
quick to encourage, slow to disparage, ever anxious to assist the order of 
which he was so bright an ornament, and never condescending to shuffle off 
and leave it outside state-rooms, as a Mussulman might leave his slippers 
outside a mosque." 

His demise on the 18th of January, 1873, was tne signal for a burst 
of eulogy, in which there was mingled but little of detraction. From 
the glowing tribute that appeared in Blackwood I take what seems to 
me a fairly discriminating estimate of the claims of the famous 
writer to the homage of posterity : 

" Apart from his novels, essays, and poetry, Lord Lytton had the great 
merit of having written the only dramas which, during the last thirty years, 
have fairly kept the stage. If we put together all his different attributes as 
an author, we can scarcely fail to consider him as a giant in literature, in 
whose productions it is difficult to say whether we should most admire the 
excellence or the versatility. Let us add to this character the observation 
how rare it is to find these qualities combined with the political sagacity, the 
oratorical power, and the practical good sense which distinguished him as a 
statesman." 

He died " peacefully in the arms of his son," and his ashes now 
mingle with those of the other illustrious dead in Westminster Ab- 
bey. 

There is one subject in connection with the career of Lord Lytton 
that I desire to notice at some length. He was a Spiritualist long 
before Spiritualism became an accepted term. Many of his earlier 
published works supply evidence of that fact. Modern Spiritualism 
dates no further back than the year 1848, when the "Rochester 

* We had a private box at Covent Garden on the first night of the play of the 
Lady of Lyons, the most successful of all his plays. Bulwer was seated in a stage- 
box. But Macready had kept the secret well ; and though many present might 
have suspected him to be the author, there was no proof that he was so. Forster 
came into our box, and warmly protested that he was not the writer : if he were, 
he (Forster) must have known it. I can easily imagine his indignant vexation 
when probably a few hours afterward the truth came out. 



LORD LYTTON. 



1 59 



knockings," repeating, as it were, the rappings described by John 
Wesley, gave a language to mysterious sounds, and supplied conclu- 
sive proof of a state of existence — retaining consciousness and mem- 
ory — following the death of the body ; bringing conviction that 
death in reality is but the portal to another life, and that souls re- 
moved can, and do, have intercourse with souls that yet continue in 
"the flesh." "The creed of the materialist is as false as it is miser- 
able, leaving," as Bulwer Lytton writes, " the bereaved without a 
solitary consolation, or a gleam of hope." I rejoice to add he draws 
a distinction between " the dogmas of the priest and the precepts of 
the Saviour," giving undoubted assurance that his faith was that of 
a Christian. 

I gladly extract a passage from that which I consider the best 
of all his books, " Devereux," where he declares, " I have neither 
anxiety nor doubt upon the noblest and most comforting of all 
creeds," and proclaims himself, in the strictest application of the 
words, " a believer and a Christian." * 

He was made more, and not less so, when he read by the light 
that Spiritualism supplied to him ; removing any blur that might 
have remained to sully faith, and making the hereafter not a 
problem to solve, but a certainty as far removed from doubt as as- 
surance that the will to move a limb is a power to move it, or any 
other of the simplest truisms that prove the senses to be guided by 
intelligence. That Bulwer was a Spiritualist there is no question. 
He may have done, as so many others do — shrunk from the public 
avowal of a belief the foundation of which is knowledge j but that 
he accepted Spiritualism as an infallible truth there can be no doubt. 

I dined with him when he was living at Craven Cottage, on the 
banks of the Thames, near Fulham. Some persons, of whom I had 
the honor to be one, were invited to meet Alexis, then a lad who 
had obtained renown as a clairvoyant. Lord Brougham was of the 
party. Dinner was delayed waiting for the " marvelous boy." 
When the bell rang, Bulwer, accompanied by two or three of his 
friends, left the room to receive him. In the hall was the card-tray : 
Bulwer took from it a dozen or so of cards, and placed them in his 
coat-pocket. After dinner Alexis went into "a trance." Bulwer 
placed his hand in his pocket, and, before withdrawing it, asked 
whose card he held ; the answer, after a brief pause, was given cor- 
rectly. The experiment was repeated at least a dozen times — always 
correctly. Alexis was a French boy, who had been but a few days 
in England. The cards were all those of Englishmen. I need not 
say how great was our astonishment. " Clairvoyance " was a term 
that probably most of the guests there heard for the first time. 

* " Tell me not of the pride of ambition ; tell me not of the triumphs of suc- 
cess ; never had ambition so lofty an end as the search after immortality ; never 
had science so sublime a triumph as the convictions that immortality will be gained. 
. . Seeking from meaner truths to extract the greatest of all." — Devereux. 



l6o LORD LYTTON. 

That was the earliest intimation I had as to a power as far sur- 
passing my belief — as it would have been that a time was close at 
hand when I might send a message to, and receive an answer from, 
New York within an hour, or be in my own drawing-room listening 
to " the music of an orchestra distant a hundred miles " from the 
seat on which I sat. Alexis yet lives, but his " power " has either 
greatly diminished or entirely left him — as in the still more remark- 
able case of Daniel Home. 

Although I might make record of several " sittings " with him in 
my own house, I limit my recollections to one at the dwelling of a 
lady in Regent's Park. The medium was Daniel Home, then in the 
zenith of his mediumistic power. There were seven persons seated 
round the table. The light was subdued, but not extinguished. 
Ranged on a cabinet were a number of bronze Burmese idols, some 
of them very heavy. [The lady's husband had held an official ap- 
pointment in Burmah.] They were scattered about all parts of the 
large drawing-room. That might have been, by possibility, a fraud, 
but what followed could not have been so. There was a small bell 
on the table. We all saw a shadowy hand and arm draped in, appar- 
ently, dark gauze take up the bell, hold it over the head of each of 
the sitters, ring it, replace it on the table and vanish. No doubt 
there were other occasions on which Bulwer witnessed phenomena 
as wondrous. I visited him more than once at his residence in Gros- 
venor Square to talk over these wonders ; and in the two latest let- 
ters which I received from him (which I have unfortunately lost) 
he expressed a strong desire to obtain the aid of some medium who 
could bring into the presence of a lady her child who had died. 
They supplied conclusive evidence of his belief that such a result 
was to be obtained. A time can not be far distant when it will infer 
no more a sense of shame to avow a belief in the phenomena that 
supply proofs of the immortality of the soul, than it has been to 
avow faith in the marvels that modern science has discovered and 
divulged for the enlightenment of humanity ; men will no more shrink 
from the admission of belief in Spiritualism than they do that words 
may travel from pole to pole at the rate of ten thousand miles in a 
second of time. 

Dr. Darwin, who died in 1802, wrote these prophetic lines : 

" Soon shall thy arm, unconquered steam, afar 
Drag the slow barge, or drive the rapid car." 

" For how many centuries lay unknown the virtues of the load- 
stone ? It was but yesterday that certain forces became to men genii 
more powerful than those conjured up by Aladdin ; that light at a 
touch springs forth from invisible air ; that thought finds a messenger 
swifter than the wings of the fabled Afrite." So Bulwer wrote in 
his " Strange Story." Had he lived ten years longer, he would have 
added that sounds are made to travel a hundred miles in a second ; 



LORD BEACONSFIELD. ^ 

and who will say that the future is not " big with discoveries " yet 
more wonderful, according to our interpretation of that word ? Who 
will limit the illimitable ? We do not see the oak in the acorn ; we 
do not detect in the egg the bill and feathers of the bird. It is safe 
to prophesy that the marvels of Spiritualism will yet be as palpable 
and familiar facts as that the steamship can move ten miles an hour 
against tide and wind, or any other discoveries which only a single 
generation ago would have seemed marvels utterly incredible.* 

Benjamin Disraeli : Earl of Beaconsfield. — I do not mean 
to write a memoir of the great man, or anything like it ; it is not 
needed, if I were capable of doing that work. Of few men living 
has so much been written in censure or in laudation. In spite of 
both he occupies a foremost place in the history of his country and 
his age, and will fill it worthily as long as lasts the language in which 
he wrote, or spoke, in the House of Commons, or among his Peers 
in that other Chamber to which his genius raised him. 

The first time I saw Benjamin Disraeli was at a dinner at the 
house of Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer, in Hertford Street, Mayfair — 
in 1832 ; the last time was at one of the evening receptions of the 
Duchess of Sutherland at Stafford House. 

On his entrance into public life, at the period of which I write — 
just fifty years ago — everything was against him ; he had, apparently, 
no one advantage to warrant the faith and trust in himself that 
eventually carried him to the loftiest niche in the Temple, proverbi- 
ally as well as practically hard to climb — the Temple of Fame ! 

He was, like George Canning, styled an " adventurer." Canning 
had much that Disraeli lacked : handsome and manly features, a 
magnificent form, eloquence at once powerful and persuasive, a 
scholastic education, and, by marriage into a ducal family, secured a 
position — comparatively early in life — veritably aristocratic. Dis- 
raeli had one advantage, however, that Canning had not : his mind 
had been enlarged and strengthened by travel. Before he entered 
on public life there were few of the countries of Europe and Asia he 
had not visited. The beneficial results were principally made avail- 
able in his fictions, but the power thus given must have been very 
valuable to him during his career as a statesman. Certainly, Dis- 
raeli was of a glorious race — a people chosen of God — but which 
had fallen into the depths of degradation : to be one of the " nation " 

* " He (Sir Lytton Bulwer) appeared to have faith in the truth of the mani- 
festations, and though admitting that clairvoyance and spiritualism might be traded 
on by impostors, as religion might, he was inclined to accept as a fact that de- 
parted spirits were permitted to revisit earth, and make their presence known, by 
some magnetic, electrical, or other agency, which within our limited sphere of 
knowledge it was impossible to explain." — Charles Mackay,, LL.. D- 



1 62 LORD BEACONSFIELD. 

was a disqualification for political or social status. It will be neces- 
sary, in giving to the subject fit consideration, to go back some forty 
years, when a Jew was everywhere under a ban : could not only not 
be in Parliament, but was not by law able to own a single acre of 
British land. Well, Disraeli was of the proscribed race — outcasts 
from every power except that of invested wealth and its concomi- 
tants. Yet I may quote in reference to him the lines applied by 
Barry Cornwall to the steed Gamarra : 

" He can trace his lineage higher 
Than the Bourbon dare aspire : 
Douglas, Guzman, or the Guelph, 
Or O'Brien's blood itself." 

His person was against him rather than in his favor : his features 
were not of the loftier Jewish type ; even in early youth he had a 
slight stoop and his form was not graceful. His conversational 
powers were few — in ordinary society, at least ; * none knew how 
much he was taking in, that, in time to come, he might give out 
much ; there was indeed little indication that he was perpetually 
listening, observing, thinking, and reasoning — but so it surely was. 
The seed was fructifying that was to yield a prodigious harvest ; but 
if any one had ventured to utter the prophecy — 

" Hail to thee that shall be great hereafter ! " 
the augur would have been met with laughter. 

I am bound by gratitude to see the great man in a favorable light. 
One of the earliest acts of his first Premiership was to accord a liter- 
ary pension to Mrs. S. C. Hall, and a very few months before the 
termination of his second Premiership, in 1880, one of ^150 to me. 
The latter was the result — not of a suggestion to her Majesty by her 
Prime Minister, but of her Majesty to him, which, however, I have 
reason to know met his entire approval. It was granted to me " for 
long and valuable services to Literature and Art." I was very thank- 
ful to him, but deeply grateful to my gracious and beloved mistress, 
the Queen. God bless her ! 

We knew Mrs. Wyndham Lewis long before she became Lady 
Beaconsfield. Her education must have been sound and good ; her 

* I have written this passage as a mere " outsider " — with very limited knowl- 
edge. I am assured, however, by one who knew him intimately, and honored and 
loved him much, that " nothing can be more incorrect than to describe Lord Bea- 
consfield's conversational powers as ' few or limited.' No man had greater charms 
in conversation ; and whether he was speaking to a frivolous woman of fashion, or 
a literary blue, or an embassador or minister of state, or a man of letters, or a 
stupid bore, or even a little child — his conversation was always 'great.' His only 
defect was that unless he cared for his company, he would not exert himself, and 
preferred silence ; and he had a great objection to be spoken to when eating." 



LORD BEACONSFIELD. 



163 



mind was of a high order ; and it may be regarded as certain that by 
her constant companionship — nay, by her frequent counsel and her 
wise advice — she aided largely in directing the after-conduct of her 
statesman-husband, and so claims a share of the gratitude due to the 
illustrious man who, in often consulting her, derogated in no whit 
from the dignity of manhood, as First Minister of the Queen and of 
the kingdom. It is enough to say of Lady Beaconsfield, that she 
was worthy to be the friend, companion, and counselor of Lord 
Beaconsfield, as well as his wife. She must have been a generous 
woman. Her splendid diamonds were always at the command of 
her friends — such of them as had to attend court or any state balls ; 
and I know her to have given a diamond ring to Letitia Landon — 
when she had known that the poetess was in immediate need of 
money — with a well-understood hint that there was no necessity for 
her keeping it. 

She was not only a handsome but a charming woman, well born 
and nurtured, with manners easy and self-possessed, generous and 
sympathetic ; and if her second husband had been born in the purple 
she would in no way have discredited the position to which he raised 
her.* That when she became his wife she was dearly and devotedly 
loved by her great statesman-husband there is no doubt ; yet the 
world might not have known it — perhaps would not have believed it 
— for she was his elder by fifteen years, and he had long passed the 
verge of manhood. It was in March, 1838, that Wyndham Lewis 
died.f In August, 1839, Disraeli married his widow. J 

Such cases — of women deeply, tenderly, devotedly loving men, 
and being beloved by men much their juniors in years — are by no 

* A miniature of her mother is that of a high-born lady. Her father was a com- 
mander in the Royal Navy. She herself was, I believe, born at Bramford-Speke 
in Devonshire, and was baptized at St. Sidwell's, Exeter, in 1792. Her brother 
was Colonel Evans, of the 29th Regiment — who came of a true Devonshire family. 
Her uncle was General Sir James Viney, K. C. B. 

\ The Annual Register, 1838, thus records his death : "Wyndham Lewis, Esq., 
of Pantgwmlass, Glamorgan, barrister-at-law, M. P. for Maidstone, a deputy-lieu- 
tenant for Glamorganshire." The Gentleman's Magazine, June, 1838, describes 
him as above, and adds, " Mr. Lewis was descended from the Llanishen branch of 
the Lewises of the ' Van.' He was the son of the Rev. Wyndham Lewis, of New- 
house, Glamorganshire, and was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn, November 23, 
1819. In 1820 he was returned to Parliament for Cardiff, and sat till the dissolution 
in 1826." In 1832 he sought election for Maidstone and was defeated ; but three 
years later was returned for that borough at the head of the poll. The famous 
election in which Wyndham Lewis and Benjamin Disraeli were returned took 
place in 1837. 

\ " Disraeli married in 1839, Mary Anne, only daughter of the late John Evans, 
Esq., of Branceford Park, Devon, and widow of Wyndham Lewis, Esq., M. P. In 
acknowledgment of her husband's official services, Mrs. Disraeli was raised to the 
peerage of the United Kingdom, as Viscountess Beaconsfield, November 28, 1868. 
She died December 15, 1872, aged eighty-three, and was interred in Hughenden 
churchyard." 



1 64 LORD BEACONSFIELD. 

means rare. I need not turn to biographies for examples ; there is 
one, however, that comes up with surpassing brightness from out the 
number. Dr. Johnson married Mrs. Porter, a widow who was twenty 
years older than he ; yet his deep and devoted love for her is an es- 
sential part of his life : his writings concerning her are among the 
most pathetic, touching, and eloquent the English language supplies 
— having reference to mourning for a "departed." When he and she 
had both passed away into that eternity where all ages are equal, 
passages such as " This was dear Letty's book," or " This was a 
prayer which dear Letty was accustomed to say," were found in 
books of devotion that had belonged to her — written there by her 
husband. Dr. Taylor alludes to a letter which " expressed grief in 
the strongest manner I had ever read." Long, very long, afterward, 
the time came when Samuel Johnson was himself entering the valley 
of the shadow of death. On the day that was the anniversary of his 
wife's death he wrote in his Diary a few words of sorrowful joy : 
" This is the day on which, in 1752, dear Letty died. Perhaps Letty 
knows that I pray for her. Perhaps Letty is now praying for me. 
God help me. Thou, God, art merciful. Hear my prayers and enable 
me to trust in Thee." It was the cry of a great heart — the last ut- 
tered on earth before there was reunion in heaven ; yet thirty years 
had passed between the latest and the first. 

But it is enough to add the dedication by the Right Hon. Ben- 
jamin Disraeli of the novel, " Sybil," to his wife : " I would inscribe 
these volumes to one whose noble spirit and gentle nature ever 
prompt her to sympathize with the suffering ; to one whose sweet 
voice has often encouraged, and whose taste and judgment have 
ever guided, these pages : the most severe of critics, but a perfect 
wife ! " 

I can not now (at this distance of time) recall the circumstances 
that brought me into intercourse with the elder Disraeli, in 1823 — at 
his house, the corner of Bloomsbury Square. It was no doubt to 
obtain some literary information ; and the visit was surely by invita- 
tion, or it would not have been made. I found him a most kindly 
and courteous gentleman, obviously of a tender, loving nature, and 
certainly more than willing to give me what I asked for. I do not 
recall him as like his illustrious son ; if my memory serves me rightly, 
he was rather fair than dark ; not above the middle height, with feat- 
ures calm in expression ; his eyes (which, however, were always cov- 
ered by spectacles) sparkling and searching, but indicating less the 
fire of genius than the patient inquiry that formed the staple of his 
books. The house still stands, apparently unchanged. Montagu 
Corry (Lord Rowton) told me that not long ago Lord Beaconsfield 
visited the house, and asked leave to go over it, which was granted, 
although the attendant had no idea that the courtesy was extended 
to the Prime Minister. He sat for some time pondering and re- 



LORD BEACONSFIELD. ^ 

fleeting — a grand past and a great future opening before his mental 
vision — in the room in which he was born. 

Once I met the two — great father and greater son — at one of 
the receptions of Lady Blessington, in Seamore Place. It is certain 
that, from the first to the last, no parent ever received more grateful 
respect or more endearing affection from a child, and I well remem- 
ber that, on the evening to which I refer, the devotion of Benjamin 
Disraeli to Isaac D'Israeli, specially noticed by all who were present, 
was classed among the admirable traits of the after Prime Minister 
of the realm. 

Thus, he was born and bred among books ; they had stored his 
mind long before he took to writing books. But in 1826, when little 
more than a youth, his pen began to make him famous. His father's 
ways had become his ways ; yet, whatever his reading had been, 
neither in his speeches nor in his writings does he give much evi- 
dence that he had studied the classic authors of his country. 

From the day he uttered the memorable words, forestalling a not 
distant time when the House would hear him, to the day on which he 
took his seat among the Peers as a "belted Earl," and, to his death, 
his genius was appreciated, his eloquence admitted, his wisdom con- 
ceded, and his vast intellectual powers accepted as guides to the 
grandest deliberative assembly that ever controlled the affairs of a 
nation and people : 

" He made by force his merit known, 

And lived to clutch the golden keys — 
To mold a mighty state's decrees, 
And shape the whisper of a throne." 

He made his maiden speech on the 7th of December, 1837 : he 
had been elected as a representative for Maidstone in that year. The 
prophecy of his future, as given by Hansard, is in these words : " The 
time would come when they would hear him." It has been other- 
wise reported ; there is a wide difference between would and should. 
That maiden speech has been pronounced a failure ; but there are 
many who did not then, and do not now, regard it in that light. It 
had much of the epigrammatic sparkle which characterized his later 
speeches, and if it were received by the House with "laughter," it 
was more for the manner than the matter.* 

The prophecy was amply fulfilled. No doubt he was led into 
blundering by his hatred of O'Connell, who had, in 1835, foretold for 
him " an immortality of infamy," and who received in return the 
threat, "We shall meet at Philippi." The member for Maidstone 
may have considered himself bound to repeat the challenge " on the 
earliest opportunity," and, forgetting that discretion is the better 

* " The honorable and extinguished member," the Globe of that day described 
him ! 



l66 LORD BEACONSFIELD. 

part of valor, fought rather with the rude violence of the bull in the 
circus than with the skill of the sabreur in the arena. 

Gilfillan, in his " Gallery of Portraits " (third series), seems to me to 
have hit the character of Disraeli with peculiar point, accuracy, and 
tact : " We saw, in a late Edinburgh journal, a comparison of Dis- 
raeli to Byron : he seems to us to bear a resemblance still more strik- 
ing to Bonaparte. The same decisive energy ; the same quick, me- 
teoric motions ; the same sharp, satiric power ; the same insulation, 
even while mingling among men ; the same heart of fire, concealed 
by an outside of frost ; the same epigrammatic conciseness of style, 
alternating with barbaric brilliance ; the same decidedly Oriental 
tastes, in manner, language, equipage, everything ; the rapidity of 
written and spoken style ; the same inconsistency, self-will, self-reli- 
ance, belief in race and destiny ; the same proneness to fatal blun- 
ders ; and the same power of recovering from their effects, and of 
drowning the noise of the fall in that of the daring flight which in- 
stantly succeeds it, distinguish both the soldier and the statesman." 

There was nothing mellifluous in his voice. It was rather harsh 
than insinuating : the reverse of coaxing — free without being fluent ; 
his epigrams were like stabs, but they told upon lovers and haters, 
and were of vast value as helps to arrive at an end in view. He was, 
to my thinking, an orator, yet not eloquent ; an advocate who strove 
to convince, yet would not condescend to persuade. But his mighty 
power over the audience he most frequently addressed was un- 
doubted. He rarely spoke to one composed of the lower, or even 
of the middle, classes ; I can not imagine him as touching their 
hearts, going home to their affections, making them fancy for a mo- 
ment he was one of themselves, as so many others have done — as I 
have often seen them do. 

In 1881, while the guest of my honored friend, Sir Philip Rose, 
Bart., at Rayners, Penn,* I paid with him a visit to Hughenden, so 
long the residence of the great statesman. The house was disman- 
tled, and although much of the furniture remained, much of it was 
prepared for removal ; but some of it was to continue there as heir- 
looms to be associated with his memory. Chief among these were 
the many sacred gifts of the Queen. It is entirely justifiable to say 
she was not only his gracious mistress, but his personal friend. Her 

* The executor, the wise adviser, and the personal friend of Disraeli, during 
nearly the whole of the career of the great statesman. It is recorded of Fulke 
Greville, Lord Brooke (the poet also), that his proud boast was to have been the 
servant of Queen Elizabeth, and f fiend to Sir Philip Sidney. I believe, if Sir 
Philip Rose had been the two former, he would not have been more proud of either, 
than he was in signing himself the "friend of Benjamin D'Israeli." 



LORD BEACONSFIELD. 



167 



Majesty never had, and never can have, a more devoted servant and 
subject than he who was so long her Prime Minister. Her regard 
for him was shown not only while he lived, but after his death. 

On the walls were many portraits of his personal friends, the 
leading sustainers of his ministry, and of the members of his family 
— from one of his father in his early boyhood, to one of him in his 
old age. They are all heirlooms. Although some of the household 
gods of the great Earl are thus preserved, by far the greater portion 
of them were scattered by the ruthless hands of the auctioneer. 
How pleasant it would have been if the historian could have written 
that power had been given to the executors to distribute them, so 
that a large number of those who honored his memory or loved and 
revered the man, had received gifts of treasures that, having been 
his, would have been valued at a thousand times their actual worth 
— or than the larger " biddings " at the sale — which heirlooms might 
thus have been obtained by all the Conservative clubs and societies 
throughout the kingdom, incentives to followers, and incitements to 
those who follow, in the struggle, now, and long to be, pending in 
Great Britain and Ireland and all their dependencies, including the 
vast Empire of India ! 

Fine views of the surrounding hills are obtained from the win- 
dows of the house. The grounds, though not extensive, are charm- 
ingly laid out. Trees were planted there by many illustrious per- 
sons ; among them is one placed on a mound by the hands of the 
Queen. On one of the hill-heights that look down on Hughenden 
there is a monument to the elder Disraeli. It was erected by the 
wife of his son. There was a touch of romance about the act : it 
was prepared during one of Disraeli's more prolonged absences. 
When driving from the station to his house, he was told to look up : 
he did so, and saw the graceful and affectionate tribute his wife had 
paid to the memory of his father ! 

Even of greater interest than a visit to the house will be a visit 
to the church, and to the churchyard where husband and wife are 
laid. " No son of his succeeding," the title he had nobly earned 
died with him. 

His place, indeed, is high among the very highest of the worthies 
of his country : a great statesman, a true patriot, a thorough Eng- 
lishman, a faithful and devoted lover of his country, jealous of its 
honor, heedful of all its interests, small and great ; nay, heedful of 
the interests of every class, from the highest to the lowest — the 
place he occupies in history will be one of rightly achieved glory 
for all time. 

I quote this tribute to his memory from a leader in the Times, 
April 10, 1880, on the retirement of Disraeli from the office he had 
held : 

"Since 1846 he has been first the animating spirit, and then the leader, of 
one of the two great Constitutional parties ; and to hold such a position for 



!68 MANNERS SUTTON. 

thirty-four years, and at the end of it to command the confidence of his fol- 
lowers in as great a degree as ever, is of itself a memorable achievement in 
political life. He has led his party from defeat to victory ; and although 
defeat has again overtaken them, they remain a compact and spirited force." 

I quote also the touching tribute of his friend and colleague, Sir 
Stafford Northcote, in a speech delivered at Kettering a short while 
after his death : 

" By the death of Lord Beaconsfield we lost a leader who was not only- 
one of the ablest, one of the most accomplished, one of the most encouraging 
leaders who ever carried his standard to victory, but we lost also a friend in 
whose constant sympathy and in whose kindness and readiness to give advice 
we were always able to find strength and support. I never knew a man who 
had so large an amount of combative elements, combined with so much gen- 
tleness and sympathy, as Lord Beaconsfield. Those who knew him only in 
the political and gladiatorial arena, as it is called, could hardly believe how 
much there was in him to make those who were fond of him very fond of him 
indeed." 

Benjamin Disraeli was born in London on the 21st of December, 
1804, and died in London on the 19th of April, 1881. His father 
lived to the age of eighty-two. 

I can not close these brief remarks concerning Benjamin Dis- 
raeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, better than by quoting the words of his 
gracious mistress, Queen Victoria, as they may be found, and will 
be found by many generations yet to come, on a tablet in the church 
at Hughenden — a memorial to his merits and her regard, of which 
he and his descendants might have been gratefully proud if they 
had been the purest and worthiest of the race of Tudors or Plan- 
tagenets, or of any prince, potentate, or power : 

To 

the dear and honored Memory 

of Benjamin Earl of Beaconsfield, 

This memorial is placed by 

his grateful and affectionate 

Sovereign and friend 

Victoria R. I. 

" Kings love him that 

speaketh right." 

February 27, 1882. Proverbs xvi, 13. 

Let my final echo from the past of the House of Commons be 
one that recalls the voice of the Speaker, Manners Sutton. It was 
surpassingly rich and melodious, and its irresistibly persuasive " Or- 
der, order ! " seemed to lull a boisterous debate as oil is said to 
smooth the surface of a turbulent sea. Yet it was so clear, distinct, 
and marvelously strong, that one might fancy it would reach the ear 
of a listener a mile away. He seldom spoke other words than " Or- 
der, order ! " When he did, they might as well have been left un- 



THE QUEEN'S FIRST PARLIAMENT. 169 

said, for he had a singular faculty of confusing language, and rarely- 
enlightened his auditors as to what he really meant. 

Alas ! there are few now living who can recall by actual mem- 
ory that silvery sound — " Order, order ! " Speaker and hearers 
have passed away from earth, and of the generation that knew Man- 
ners Sutton a few survivors only remain — waifs cast up from the 
ocean of the past ! * 

There is a theme associated with these details concerning the 
" Giants in both Houses " to which I refer with more than mere 
pleasure ; for among the happiest of my Recollections is that of 
the Queen opening her first Parliament, on the 20th of November, 
1837. Outside — it was a "Queen's day"; hundreds of thousands 
thronged the streets, filled the windows, or occupied platforms 
and balconies. The scene may be easily imagined ; by those who 
witnessed the ceremony in the House of Peers it can never be 
forgotten.f 

The usual " Speech from the throne " concluded with these words, 
her Majesty addressing " My Lords and Gentlemen " : " The early 
age at which I am called to the sovereignty of this kingdom renders 
it a more imperative duty that, under Divine Providence, I should 
place my reliance upon your cordial co-operation, and upon the loyal 
affection of all my people." 

A passage preceding, in which her Majesty had expressed herself 
anxious to declare her confidence in their " loyalty and wisdom," was 
delivered with marked emphasis ; she paused, raised her eyes from 
the paper, and looked around her on the array of peers and peer- 
esses, and commoners below the bar, who had assembled to tender 
homage. There was no heart that did not throb with response. A 
murmur passed through the assembly that would have been a cheer 
but for the solemnity of the place and the occasion. It was not sup- 
pressed without ; the cheers of a multitude were heard with echoing 
delight by all who sat or stood within. And assuredly that day — 
now forty-six years ago — was registered in the memories of all who 
heard the young Queen's words, as the beginning of a reign auspi- 
cious beyond any other in the records of British history. 

There were many present who had known her Majesty's prede- 
cessors — George III, George IV, and William IV. The feeling 
was universal and irresistible, that — from that day — loyalty became 

* But thirty of the Peers and Commons who passed the Reform Bill in 1832 are 
living — and only one of them is a member of Parliament — in 1882, the jubilee year 
of the Great Reformation ! 

f I was present when King William IV delivered his last speech to Parliament 
— and what a contrast ! The day was gloomy and dark, and when the King began 
to read he stammered at the first sentence, and the words were perfectly audible 
as he looked about him and exclaimed angrily, " Damn it, I can't see ! " Lights 
were brought, and he proceeded. 



I ;0 THE QUEEN'S FIRST PARLIAMENT. 

an easy duty, which it had not been during the three preceding 
reigns.* 

The lessons taught by the throne to the people had been seldom 
salutary, and many found their best argument for disaffection, near- 
ing republicanism, in the examples of mental disability to govern, or 
low and often vicious tastes and pursuits, or indifference to the gen- 
eral needs, or arbitrary and unconstitutional application of power, in 
the monarchy of these realms. One or other of these evils existed 
and prevailed until Queen Victoria ascended the throne — when they 
all ceased. The Crown has since been not only honored, but loved, 
by the millions who are its subjects. During the whole of her reign 
vice has had no excuse because of its practice and patronage in high 
places. 

Happily have the anticipations as well as the hopes of " all orders 
and classes " of the subjects of the Crown been realized, and through 
the vista of more than forty years the meanest, no less than the lof- 
tiest, of her subjects looks back with thankfulness to the advent of 
that royal lady who, in her early youth, was called to reign over the 
kingdom and all its dependencies, and subsequently the Empire of 
India. 

It was a glorious scene, that scene in the old House of Lords, on 
the 20th of November, 1837. The mother of the Queen — the mother 
to whose judicious training and deep affection she owed so much — 
stood by her side a little in the rear ; her ladies, grouped behind her, 
bore up her train ; on her left stood her Prime Minister, Viscount 
Melbourne, and her other advisers and ministers ; ranged around 
were the peers and peeresses, all in robes and court dresses " blazing 
with jewels " ; while thronging below the bar was the " House of 
Commons," a mingled mass of all politicians, the most intense Radi- 
cal among them converted, for that day at least, into a loyal and de- 
voted upholder of the throne, f 

Incidental to this theme there are some matters which few can 
treat — for Memory must go a long way back into a time now almost 
remote, when Queen Victoria ascended the throne, and not long 
afterward contracted the auspicious marriage from which have 

* Sir Denis le Marchant states that in 1830, " Peel told his tutor, Bishop Lloyd, 
that he believed the monarchy could last only five or six years longer." It is well 
remembered that William IV was not permitted by his ministry to go into the city, 
apprehensive of personal danger from the "mob." The threats of the Chartists, 
long ago forgotten, are blots erased from English history. There are many who 
can recall the time to which I carry my readers back, who believe, as did Sir Rob- 
ert Peel, that the monarchy had been seriously endangered by monarchs who had 
no part of the respect or affection of the people governed. It is hardly too much 
to say that — which few nowadays will believe — when Queen Victoria ascended 
the throne, the country was on the eve of revolution. 

f These brief details of the interesting and impressive ceremony I have bor- 
rowed from a Memory of the scene by Mrs. S. C. Hall. 



THE PRINCE CONSORT. 



171 



resulted so many "boons and blessings" to the nation and the 
world. 

If the present was then full of sunshine, no doubt many, in 
thought, asked of Destiny how it would be in the future. The Prin- 
cess Victoria was born and had been educated in Kensington Palace ; 
up to her eighteenth year she had lived there in comparative soli- 
tude, apart from society, companioned almost solely by her mother ; 
the people she was destined to govern knew nothing of her tastes and 
disposition, except that, now and then, through very limited circles, 
information of an assuring character would creep out from the mas- 
ters by whom she was taught. To her mother, the Duchess of Kent, 
a sacred trust had been committed ; it was discharged fully and right- 
eously. For more than forty years since she was a crowned Queen, 
the results of her " bringing up " have received ample and conclusive 
proof. 

I refer to the subject only to make record that on the memorable 
day of which I write probably there was much apprehension as to 
the future of that young girl, not only in the Commons, who came at 
her call, the Peers over whom she presided, but by the people who 
had lined the route through which she passed on her way from 
Buckingham Palace to the House of Lords. 

It was then, at that most happy time, so pregnant with a here- 
after of gladness or a future of gloom, that the young Queen Victoria 
contracted her auspicious marriage with the Prince Albert. It was 
a happy day for her realm, for all its colonies and dependencies, for 
all the world indeed, when, on the 23d of November, 1839, sne 
announced her intention to her Privy Council, eighty-three of her 
councilors being present. No one of them is now living ! To 
nearly all of them the Prince Albert was then personally unknown, 
but good repute had preceded him, and the impression he had made 
was far more than favorable. On the 10th of February, 1840, they 
were married. 

It can not be disrespectful to trace much of the character of the 
Queen to the influence of the Prince over her mind during the years 
that elapsed between 1840, when they were wedded, and the year 
1 86 1, when the Prince was removed from her side. She was very 
young when she became the wife of a prudent, conscientious, upright, 
and emphatically good man, by whom her thoughts, her conduct, 
her acts, private and public, were, thenceforward, of necessity to 
be in a great measure guided, directed, and decided. That they 
were so we know, and have reason to thank God for the conse- 
quences that followed — the fervent attachment of a whole people 
to the Sovereign, rendering, I repeat, loyalty the easiest of all 

THEIR DUTIES. 



172 



THE PRINCE CONSORT. 



The Prince Albert. — I can not better close this Retrospect of 
the great men who flourished in the Houses of Lords and Commons 
during the earlier half of the nineteenth century, than by reference 
to the career of one who, if he were the husband of the Queen, was 
also a member of the House of Peers. At a later period than I 
chronicle, he had a vast share in determining the destinies of these 
kingdoms, far more than any man who ruled them as First Minister 
of the Crown. He obtained, and earned, a grander title than any 
the Queen could have conferred upon him — the title of " the Good 
Prince." * 

Many of us know from experience what is meant by the term 
" hard work " : not limb-work, but brain-work ; work that is perpet- 
ual thought, from which repose rarely results ; work that involves 
great responsibility, that is, so to speak, a continual haunt, from which 
even sleep is not free ; work that makes us long for the "bourn" 
where the weary are at rest ; such work as will sometimes produce a 
perilous sensation that the ills we know not of might be better borne 
than the ills we have, were it not that, added to the dread of some- 
thing after death, there are ties that bind us to life — the duties that 
are paramount, that often subdue despair when they fail to nourish 
hope. 

I question if there were a single worker in the dominions of 
the Queen who labored harder than did the Queen's husband. 
Let those who fancy that princes and rulers have nothing to do 
but enjoy themselves read Sir Theodore Martin's book ; they will 
find that no slave to whom was given a task beyond his strength 
labored more earnestly to accomplish it than did the Prince. He 
might, indeed, have taken continual ease, but it would have been 
by neglecting continual duty — duty self-imposed. These records 
show to conviction that his toil was incessant, where pleasure might 
have supplied ready, and indeed rational, excuse for luxurious ease. 
The words "He would not entertain the briefest holiday" apply 
not only to one eventful period of his life, but to nearly the 
whole of it, after he was called upon to take his place in public 
affairs, and to become apparently the irresponsible, in reality the ■ 
responsible, First Minister of the Crown. A single passage from 
one of the letters of the Queen will suffice as illustration : " What 

* Any estimate of the character of the Prince must be based on the volumes of 
Memoirs by Sir Theodore Martin, K. C. B. I know of no work of its class so 
entirely excellent ; I do not find in it a single page that might be omitted without 
loss. The task was one of exceeding delicacy and difficulty ; no biographer ever 
undertook a duty so delicate and difficult ; and certainly no book has ever been 
published that has been received with such entire approval. Critics of all parties 
have praised it. "Sir Theodore Martin has added to the biographical works of the 
age and country a work of inestimable value." That opinion has been universally 
indorsed. 



THE PRINCE CONSORT. 



173 



he does, and how he works, is really prodigious, and always for the 
good of others." * 

It is not so long since he left earth but that many who are not 
old can remember him — his tall, manly, handsome form and features, 
the grace of his deportment, the urbanity of his manner, the felicity 
with which he prevented those who had need to seek his presence 
from feeling that he considered courtesy a condescension — blending 
in happy harmony dignity with friendliness. In his presence it was 
not easy to forget that he was a prince, the first subject of the realm ; 
but the weight of such knowledge was never oppressive. If it would 
have been difficult to be familiar with him, the feeling with which he 
impressed us was far removed from awe. 

Proof may have been needed, for it has been amply supplied — 
that the Prince Albert was a model of excellence in all the relations 
of life — as husband, father, son, brother, friend, subject, and citizen. 
His example will go a long way to inculcate the wisdom of virtue. 
It is well to have this testimony from one who — having studied the 
character thoroughly and wisely — thus pronounces judgment as the 
outcome of years of reading masses of correspondence and minute in- 
quiry into every conceivable source of information : " During many 
years of close and conscientious study of the Prince Consort's char- 
acter, he (Sir Theodore Martin) has at every step found fresh occa- 
sion to admire its purity, its unselfishness, its consistency, and its noble 
self-control." 

The principle on which he resolved to act (to use his own words) 
was this : " To sink his own individual existence in that of his wife ; 
to aim at no power by himself or for himself ; to shun all ostenta- 
tion ; to assume no separate responsibility before the public," but 
making his position entirely a part of the Queen's, " continually and 
anxiously to watch every part of the public business, in order to be 
able to advise and assist her, at any moment, in any of the multifari- 
ous and difficult questions brought before her — sometimes political, 
or social, or personal — as the natural head of her family, superin- 
tendent of her household, manager of her private affairs, her sole 
confidential adviser in politics, and only assistant in her communi- 
cations with the officers of the Government." His worth was not 
fully estimated until after he had left earth. Of the plans he sug- 
gested some have been carried out ; others have fallen through, 
others are in abeyance ; but it is admitted on all hands that they 

* " He was at once the most hard-working and most practical of men, and in 
these respects an Englishman of Englishmen, if hard work and practical aims are 
to be accounted English characteristics. Art, science, and social economy, public 
instruction, the bettering of the common lot, the elevation of human aims, the com- 
fort and purity of humble homes, the mitigation of unmerited sufferings, the intro- 
duction of hope and sweetness into the lives of the poor — these were his favorite 
occupations and recreations." — Sir Theodore Martin. 



174 



THE PRINCE CONSORT. 



manifested profound wisdom and pure patriotism, and an utter ab- 
sence of a shadow of selfishness. 

He had many hands, no doubt, to co-operate and aid : but he 
was the moving power of them all. There was no subject on which 
he took, unexamined, the opinions of others, no plan that he did not 
himself minutely scrutinize, no incident that he did not subject to 
the control of his own capacious and upright mind. We know now 
from the invaluable sources of Sir Theodore Martin's volumes how 
much the nation, and so, by inference, all nations of the world, are 
indebted to his wisdom, rectitude, and far-seeing power, as (I quote 
from the Times) " the man, the statesman, the patriot, and the phi- 
lanthropist." I quote again from that journal : " Above all, we see 
— and we are made to follow the course of development with a grow- 
ing warmth of sympathy — how the tender husband became the 
trusted counselor, whose guidance was almost as much to be relied 
on as his unselfish affection." 

His healthy, upright, considerate, generous, sympathetic man- 
hood but fulfilled the promises of childhood and early youth ; the 
character when fully formed only added capacity, sagacity, and in- 
tellectual vigor to natural gifts. Experience was the sole teacher he 
needed ; it came early, to be removed — far too early. But the work 
he did may be accepted as evidence of the more he would have done 
had his life on earth been continued into old age. Possessing great 
power, he had learned how to use it for the benefit of all who came 
within reach of his influence ; resisting all the seductions of ambi- 
tion, and avoiding all acts that might seem, in the remotest degree, 
to weaken the position of the Queen in the estimation of a single 
one of her subjects. 

His death — if that must be called death which the poet describes 
as but a passage from this " life of mortal breath " to ■ the life Elys- 
ian, whose portal we call Death " — was a fitting close to such a life : 
brief but pregnant with mighty issues for a present and a future. 
There is no passage in Sir Theodore Martin's volume more truly 
touching than this : 

" Death in his view was but the portal to a future life, in which he 
might hope for a continuance, under happier conditions, of all that was 
best in himself and in those he loved, unclogged by the weaknesses and un- 
saddened by the failures, the misunderstandings, the sinfulness, and the 
sorrows of earthly existence." 

Yes, Reason justifies, and Holy Writ sanctions, nay, encourages, 
if it does not command, belief that work commenced on earth will 
be continued in heaven. Such was the faith of one of the best men 
who ever lived to do earth-duty, faithfully, uprightly, and conscien- 
tiously — for God and man. No man was better fitted to live, yet 
none have been better prepared to die ; his death was one of those 



THE PRINCE CONSORT. I75 

inscrutable ordinations of Providence into which who will venture 
to inquire, or concerning which who will dare to speculate ? To our 
narrow range of sight it was a calamity, not alone to those who so 
greatly depended on his wisdom and affection, but to his country 
and to all humankind. That his influence largely prevails now where 
it is most valuable and valued, I no more doubt than I doubt as to 
the after-state to which he was translated. 



RECOLLECTIONS 
OF EARLY EDITING. 

"The Amulet." — In 1825 I was applied to by Messrs. Baynes, 
publishers, of Paternoster Row, to edit for them an " Annual," to 
which I gave the name of " The Amulet, a Christian and Literary 
Remembrancer," for the connection of Messrs. Baynes was with re- 
ligious readers, and they desired to give to the work a semi-religious 
tone. In the autumn of 1826 the first yearly volume was published ; 
ten volumes followed ; but in 1837 the "fashion " had ceased, and it 
was discontinued, the publishers having been previously changed : 
in the year 1830 it had become the property of the firm of Westley 
and Davis. 

I received from them no salary, but I was entitled to a share of 
the profits. Of profit there was little or none ; but the fatal agree- 
ment to which I had consented made me, unknowingly, a partner in 
the publication. Westley and Davis became bankrupts, and I was 
made responsible for the accumulated debts contracted for " The 
Amulet." The terrible event utterly ruined me, and I had to begin 
life again. It is a subject I revert to with exceeding pain. The 
debts were no debts of mine. Though legally a partner in the con- 
cern, I was, by no means, morally so, except that if there were profits 
I was to share them. There were none — only one year had I re- 
ceived any ; but I was a victim none the less. I will not dwell on 
this dismal passage in my life's history. 

Some details concerning the " Annuals " can not fail to be of in- 
terest. The public, when those productions were novel and numer- 
ous, and in their zenith as to cost and beauty, paid for the elegant 
works in question, according to an estimate I made at the time, 
^100,000 per annum. 

The annual was an exotic, introduced by Mr. Ackerman, in 1822, 
from Germany. The first production of the kind was edited by Mr. 
Shoberl — a name that has left no mark. In 1823 the " Friendship's 
Offering " followed. Both, however, were accompanied by pages of 
blank paper, and were but slight removes from the old pocket-books. 
The " Literary Souvenir, " issued in i824-'25, was a great move in ad- 



THE ANNUALS. 



177 



vance. Its editor, Mr. Alaric Watts, gave to the production a high 
character at once, both as to art and literature. My own annual, 
"The Amulet," followed suit ; the "Winter's Wreath" succeeded; 
then came the " Keepsake," and so popular had these Christmas 
gift-books become that in 1829 no fewer than seventeen were issued. 

A few among them deserve to be honored with a fuller renown 
than the bare mention of their names. In the " Gem," for instance, 
edited by Thomas Hood, was published his famous and weirdly 
powerful poem, the " Dream of Eugene Aram." The " Anniversary " 
(a guinea annual, started as a rival to the " Keepsake ") had for its 
editor Allan Cunningham. He was aided with considerable ability 
by many great authors, especially those of his own country — Wilson, 
and Lockhart, and Hogg. In the " Anniversary " Southey printed 
the poem on his own portrait, and Theodore Hook his sketch en- 
titled the " Splendid Annual " — the splendid annual being the Right 
Honorable the Lord Mayor of London. It lasted, however, I think, 
but three years, the first volume bearing date 1828. 

The " Winter's Wreath " contained pieces by the most popular 
writers of the day, foremost among the poets who honored its pages 
being Wordsworth. The " Oriental Annual," " Heath's Picturesque 
Annual," " Gems of Beauty," and a long list of others, including 
annuals for children — "The Juvenile Forget-Me-Not," edited by 
Mrs. S. C. Hall, and the " New- Year's Gift," edited by Mrs. Alaric 
Watts — belong to that period. 

Competition necessarily gave rise to prodigious efforts to obtain 
pre-eminence. In their earlier years, the Annuals were all bound up 
in tinted paper, and inclosed in a case. Paper yielded to silk, in 
which the majority of them soon made their appearance ; then fol- 
lowed morocco leather, and velvet. The public were startled at 
finding elegant books, full bound in morocco — for the binding of 
which they had been accustomed to pay nearly as much as the cost 
of the whole work — illustrated by exquisitely engraved prints from 
paintings by artists of the highest celebrity, any one of which pre- 
viously would have been valued at the charge demanded for the 
series, and containing prose and poetry, written for the several pub- 
lications by leading and popular writers of the age. These improve- 
ments, had, indeed, been gradual, and had grown out of the large 
circulation to which some of the annuals had attained, and, in espe- 
cial, to the spirit of energy and enterprise which a laudable rivalry 
had called into existence. Sums of money that sound preposterous 
were lavished upon the several departments : five hundred pounds 
were given to Sir Walter Scott, and proportionate remuneration to 
other authors, for articles contributed to a single volume of the 
" Keepsake " ; amounts varying from twenty to one hundred and fifty 
guineas were paid to artists for the loan of pictures to be engraved ; 
and it was by no means uncommon for the engraver to receive one 
hundred and fifty guineas for the production of a single plate. For 



178 THE ANNUALS. 

one, indeed, " The Crucifixion," after Martin, engraved by Le Keux, 
that gentleman received from me one hundred and eighty guineas 
(size seven inches by four), making the cost of the print, including 
the sum paid for the drawing, two hundred and ten guineas. The 
volume of the " Amulet " that contained this costly work had also two 
other engravings, which together cost two hundred and sixty guineas ; 
the other nine prints amounted, perhaps, to seven hundred guineas ; 
so that for the embellishments alone the publishers had to pay nearly 
twelve hundred guineas. And yet, strange to say, that was the only 
volume of the whole series of the " Amulet " that yielded a profit- 
able return upon the capital expended and the labor bestowed. 

Until the " Keepsake " entered the field, all the annuals were 
published at twelve shillings. The " Keepsake," edited by Mansel 
Reynolds — a name forgotten — was an experiment at a guinea, and 
it was generally thought would be a failure ; the beauty of the em- 
bellishments, however, was very great ; the letterpress was wretched 
in proportion, yet the trial was a successful one ; and the next year 
Charles Heath, the proprietor, amended the mistake into which he 
had fallen, and obtained the co-operation of several of the best 
authors of the age and country. His expenses for the literary por- 
tion of this second volume amounted to no less than ^1,600. The 
existing annuals having been made nearly as perfect as they could 
be, novelties were projected as the next step to obtain profit. A 
volume of engravings, from the old masters, supplemented exclu- 
sively by religious writings, entitled " The Iris," had existence for 
two or three years, and was abandoned ; a " Landscape Annual " 
was conceived by Mr. Charles Heath ; annuals for children were de- 
vised ; the " Book of Beauty " was a new and happy idea ; scientific 
annuals made their appearance ; and Thomas Hood entered the 
field with his " Comic Annual." They all had their day, and van- 
ished by degrees. 

Before their introduction into England, the Christmas gift-books 
were, as I have stated, and as some of my readers know, paltry 
pocket-books ; their successors contained much to interest and some- 
what to instruct. The prints that used to ornament the chimney- 
pieces of houses of the middle class were tawdry colored daubs, 
prejudicial to taste, and very often injurious to morality. They were 
displaced by engravings after the choicest works of our British 
painters, executed in such a manner as to educate the eye and give 
employment to the mind. And we are by no means to put out of 
sight ' the fact that the popularity of the annuals spread through 
various channels a large sum of money every year — such sum being 
divided among persons whose occupations were beneficial to the 
country. 

They have been sneered at as literary toys. That is not just ; 
as compared with the Christmas issues of to-day they were of very 
great excellence. No such engravings as they contained are now 



EDITORS. 



179 



produced ; while the literary contents, principally tales and poems, 
are as pure gold compared with the tinsel of the modern magazine. 

History of France. — In 1830 I produced a remarkable book : 
remarkable not by reason of its merit or value, but from the peculiar 
circumstances under which it was written. At that time monthly 
issues of original works were in favor with the public. The " Family 
Library " was published by Murray ; the " Cyclopaedia " by Long- 
man, and the "Juvenile Library" by Colburn. They were not du- 
rable : the fashion ceased after a comparatively brief time, and they 
are now forgotten. But among the authors were Moore (" History 
of Ireland "), Milman (" History of the Jews "), Scott •(" Natural 
Magic "), and others of equal note. 

Mr. jerdan, who edited Colburn's series, was "in a fix." He 
had been promised for one of the volumes a " History of France," 
but as, at the last moment, it was not forthcoming, he called upon 
me to ascertain if I could by any possibility write it and have it 
ready for publication by the first of the month " then next ensuing." 
It was the 9th of the month, consequently there were but twenty-one 
days and nights in which to write, print, and publish a book of four 
hundred pages. Six engravings had, moreover, to be made — their 
subjects not even decided upon. There was nothing for it but to 
produce the book or close the series, as the work must have ceased 
unless the month gave its continuing part. 

I undertook the task, and occupied one day in collecting all the 
histories of France I could obtain. Surrounded by a formidable 
array of volumes I began my task — working at it all night and all 
day, during eighteen nights and days, without interruption. The 
result was that, within the stipulated time, a " History of France," 
condensed from perhaps a hundred volumes, was written, printed, 
bound, and, with six engravings, was in the hands of the public on 
the first of the month — " then next ensuing." 

I have not a copy of the work. How it was accomplished I can 
scarcely say. The overwork led to a brain-fever ; I had not gone 
to bed for twelve nights ; and the payment I received for it was very 
hardly, though very quickly, earned. It is somewhat strange that 
Jerdan in his Autobiography has made no mention of this series, or 
of his engagement with Colburn and Bentley as its editor. Indeed, 
I had myself forgotten the title of the series, and had some difficulty 
in finding it. Jerdan wrote the first volume of the said series, and 
mine was the second. 

Editors are not born, but made. The calling demands a long 
apprenticeship, and the qualities of mind required for the discharge 
of editorial duties are the opposites of genius. To write well, is one 
thing ; to edit well, another. It is first requisite that an editor 
should know, from careful inquiry and much thought, what subjects 



!8o THOMAS CAMPBELL. 

ought to be treated in the publication he directs ; he must then 
determine who is the best person to deal with each theme. A. B., 
otherwise the first object of his selection, may not be at hand ; C. 
D. is perhaps ill ; E. F. may be too much occupied. Still, the mat- 
ter can not be passed over or postponed. The editor must in such 
circumstances be sufficiently gifted as a writer to treat it himself. 
His duty, however, is to employ, whenever practicable, an abler hand 
than his own. The less he himself writes the better. If he takes 
the best topics, which he will not fail to do, he loses the aid of pens 
more valuable than his own. In a word, he must study solely the 
interests of the work under his charge, and give no thought to the 
satisfaction or the reputation a task may confer on himself. He 
must, however, be a despot : to approve or reject without being 
called upon to assign a reason for his decision. " I will it " 
must suffice. Moreover, the privilege to erase he must always 
use, though never a power to add. An editor must be a despot 
acting on the principle " le roi le veut " ; if he considers it right 
to give a reason for what he does, he will be perpetually "at 
sea." " Letting ' I dare not,' wait upon ' I would,' " must involve 
him in a continual " fog," and if he thinks it meet to have con- 
sultations as to the course to be pursued, he will always be in a 
maze, running backward and forward, and utterly lost as to the 
way out. It is needless to say his duty infers nothing approach- 
ing to discourtesy when he declines to give a reason for the faith 
that is in him. 

There has seldom been a worse editor than the great poet 
Thomas Campbell, so long the conductor of Colburn's New Monthly 
Magazine. His friend and regular contributor, Talfourd, hit off his 
character in a sentence. " Stopping the press for a week to deter- 
mine the value of a comma, and balancing contending epithets for a 
fortnight," writes the author of " Ion " of Campbell as editor of the 
New Monthly. He never knew where to find the thing he was in 
search of. His study was a mass of confusion ; articles tendered, 
good or bad, were sometimes, after a weary search, found thrust be- 
hind a row of books on his book-shelf ; and he was rarely known to 
give an immediate answer, yes or no, to any applicant for admission 
into his magazine. In short, though a great man, he was utterly un- 
fit to be an editor.* I have nearly the same to say of Theodore 

* I find this passage as a note to an article in the New Monthly, 1829 : " I have 
admitted this paper from unwillingness to refuse anything from the pen of its 
writer ; but delicacy toward the memory of his friend need not prevent me from 
saying that I consider his judgment of dead and of living authors and painters to 
have been equally ill entitled to the epithet ' unerring.' " 

In the first volume of the New Monthly he edited — in 1821— he had to make 
an apology for an article which he " inserted without reflection, but had observed 
its unfairness and felt dissatisfied with himself for having published it." 



THE " NE W MONTHL Y." t 8 1 

Hook, Lytton Bulwer, and Tom Hood, who were his successors in 
the editorial chair. 

In i829-'3o I was editing the Morning Journal newspaper and 
the British Magazine. That magazine followed The Spirit and Man- 
ners of the Age, a monthly periodical, the name of which had been 
changed. I conducted both for the firm of Westley and Davis, the 
then proprietors and publishers of the "Amulet." They had con- 
tained contributions from many of the more popular authors of the 
age. 

Early in 1830 a communication from Mr. Colburn led to an inter- 
view with that somewhat eccentric publisher, the result of which was 
that I became sub-editor of the New Monthly. Why he selected me 
and discharged Mr. Cyrus Redding I did not know, and can not 
even now guess. Redding had, for a long time, in a great measure 
directed Mr. Campbell, and knew his " business " well. But so it was, 
and I became sub-editor in his place, Mr. Campbell remaining editor.* 

The association did not last long. Although my relations with 
the poet were entirely harmonious, and we never had a dispute, the 
change could not have been agreeable to him. Not long afterward 
he retired from the New Monthly, and became — nominally, at all 
events — editor of a new magazine, the Metropolitan, published by 
Saunders and Otley, who had succeeded Mr. Colburn, or rather Col- 
burn and Bentley, as occupants of the old premises in Conduit Street. 

The Metropolitan had the valuable aids of Thomas Moore and 
Captain Marryat, but was never " a success," the curse of bad editor- 
ship clinging to it. 

The "New Monthly Magazine." — On the retirement of 
Campbell I became sole editor of the New Monthly. Campbell was 
a Whig in politics, I was a Conservative ; but I carefully avoided all 
topics of party politics. It is not for me to say how I conducted the 
magazine. It was easy, by courtesy and liberal payment, to obtain 
the help of efficient writers, and of course I did so, certainly to the 
satisfaction of Mr. Colburn. It was my custom to spend one even- 
ing of every week with him at his house in Marylebone Road, to ex- 
plain my plans for the ensuing number. He was then, though some- 
what aged, newly married, and to a wife who made him miserable. 
She had kept a small circulating library, and the suspicions of Bent- 
ley had been excited by finding that in her library early copies of all 
new books were to be found — sometimes before they were actually 
published. Colburn married her, and by her bad habits she rendered 
both him and his home wretched. I saw her fling a tea-pot at his 
head. She died at last a victim to drink. 

* It is not a little singular that the first money received by me for any compo- 
sition of mine was from Mr. Colburn ; that was, however, in 1822 — for a poem in 
the magazine of which I was subsequently the editor. 



1 82 ED WARD L YTTON B UL WER. 

She is not to be confounded with his second wife — an estimable 
lady, who afterward became the wife of John Forster — bringing to 
him a large fortune bequeathed to her by her first husband. 

Colburn was a little bustling man, who seemed incapable of de- 
cision concerning anything — from the choice of a proffered book to 
the quantity of sugar he should put into his tea-cup. There was 
lamentable hesitation in all he did or said, seldom uttering more than 
half a sentence, and leaving it uncertain what he thought. Yet he 
was a man of a kindly and generous nature ; his impulses were good, 
and he was considerate and liberal to authors. He was publisher of 
most of the best works of the time, especially in fiction, both pre- 
viously to his taking Mr. Bentley into partnership and after the ter- 
mination of their alliance. 

No one ever knew his history, but it was said that he was a natu- 
ral son of old Lord Lansdowne. I did not know, and did not care 
to know. Our relations were harmonious, and entirely satisfactory ; 
and, if I could not respect, I certainly esteemed him. 

In 1 83 1 he conceived, and perhaps rightly, that a renowned 
writer as the editor of his magazine would be an advantage to it, and 
Mr. Lytton Bulwer was appointed to that post. He had for some 
time previously been a contributor to the magazine, and had written 
for it better things than he afterward produced. I thus became his 
sub-editor, and was well content with my position, for it was in some 
sense an honor to be connected with that great man. But he soon 
made his editorship a vehicle for propagating his then advanced 
political creed — ultra- Radical ; and I saw with alarm that he was 
rapidly rendering the magazine unpopular. Its price was three 
shillings and sixpence, and it circulated chiefly among clergymen 
and steady " old-notioned " country gentlemen. The opinions of the 
new editor ran counter to theirs, and the magazine declined rapidly 
in sale. At the end of the year Mr. Bulwer and Mr. Colburn parted, 
and I became again sole editor of the New Monthly Magazine. It is 
not, I hope, wrong in me to say that my connection with the author 
of " Pelham " was to him, as it was to me, entirely gratifying. I ob- 
tained his good opinion, and I retained it, I have reason to believe, 
as long as he lived. But I felt then, and I feel now, that by his 
ultra- Liberal opinions he did the magazine incalculable mischief. In 
his year it fell from 5,000 to 4,000, and never recovered the injury 
inflicted. 

Still the magazine, if it lost the old steady subscribers, gained 
many among the upholders of Reform and Liberalism. The writings 
of Mr. Bulwer were powerful and eloquent, and pleased many ; but 
he wrote too much : he considered himself too much, and the in- 
terests of the magazine too little. He had a cause to advocate and 
uphold : he sacrificed the publication to do so. Yet he was thor- 
oughly in earnest and grudged no labor, thinking, no doubt, that 
while forwarding his own purpose he was advancing the interests of 



THEODORE HOOK. 183 

the publication. Mr. Colburn blamed me when he discovered the 
results ; but he had no right to do so, as I told him at the time. He 
had made me a lieutenant under the control of a superior officer, and 
to have gone to Colburn with suspicions or complaints would have 
been to play the part of a spy, and would have dishonored me. 

Theodore Hook. — Mr. Bulwer having resigned his editorship, 
it was for me to prevent evil arising from the lack of his admirable 
and valuable contributions. This was, in a measure, accomplished 
by engaging the services of Mr. Theodore Hook, the best of whose 
novels, Gilbert Gurney," soon appeared monthly in the pages of 
the New Monthly. A more important and useful contributor could 
not have been obtained. He required, however, continual watching : 
not only did he seek to press upon me (in Notes of the Month, which 
he principally contributed) unseemly and mischievous high-Tory 
politics, but he was never ready in time with the continuing chapters 
of his novel ; and more than once, as the last day of the month drew 
near, I have gone to him for " copy," and have found that not a word 
was written. I would, therefore, wait while he wrote the required 
quantity, being sometimes detained until daybreak, and at last driv- 
ing off with the manuscript to the printer — barely in time. 

He was even less fit to be an editor than Thomas Campbell, for 
he had no moral sentiment to guide him, and gave little thought to 
any evil he might do. Yet, in 1836, he became the editor of the 
New Monthly Magazine. The manner of the change of editorship 
was as follows : Colburn and Bentley had parted ; it is not too much 
to say, with ill-feeling one toward the other. Mr. Bentley announced 
a magazine of Humor. The announcement startled Mr. Colburn, 
and he at once determined to produce a rival, resolving to secure 
Hook as its editor, which was speedily but very inconsiderately done. 
Mr. Hook's " ways " are well known. So wildly resolute was Mr. 
Colburn in his desperate whim that he at once met Mr. Hook's needs 
by giving him bills for ^400 in payment of his first year's salary as 
editor of a magazine in embryo, and which was never even announced. 
When the intelligence was communicated to me by Mr. Colburn, I 
naturally protested against it ; showing him that, in order to make 
his new magazine successful, he must ruin the New Monthly — taking 
from it not only Theodore Hook, but Poole, whose " Little Pedling- 
ton " and other papers had immensely served the New Monthly, with 
others of my best contributors. These, and no doubt other protests 
prevailed, and Mr. Colburn determined to abandon the hopeless un- 
dertaking. 

Mr. Colburn, therefore, went to Fulham to announce his resolve 
to Mr. Hook. Mr. Hook was exactly of Mr. Colburn's new opinion ; 
but when a hint was given as to the return of the ^400, he re- 
sponded that the sum in question was already spent. To give back 
money was as much against his will as it was beyond his power. 



1 84 JOHN FORSTER. 

The interview ended by Mr. Hook suggesting, " Make me editor 
of the New Monthly, and I will work it out," and that fatal step Mr. 
Colburn took. When he communicated his resolve to me, I re- 
minded him that he had reproached me with not telling him of Mr. 
Bulwer's shortcomings and wrong-doings while he was editor and I 
was sub-editor of the magazine. I added that Mr. Hook's sub-editor 
I would not be. His co-editor I would, however, become, and, if so 
circumstanced, could object to the appearance of any article the in- 
sertion of which I thought would be mischievous, and without breach 
of honor could communicate my views to Mr. Colburn. In a word, 
I should have a voice in all matters appertaining to the magazine. 
Mr. Colburn at once met my view, said it was exactly his, and I con- 
sidered the matter as thus settled. 

Soon after Mr. Colburn gave one of his customary dinners in 
Great Marlborough Street. I sat, as I had invariably done on 
such occasions for a long time, in the, so to speak, vice-chair. 
Several of the contributors were present ; in fact, it was a dinner 
to his staff. 

John Forster. — Among the guests was Mr. John Forster. He 
had been introduced into the magazine by me. I considered him 
my personal friend ; there did not pass a week without his dining at 
my house. I consulted him upon all matters connected with the 
magazine, and gave him his choice of subjects. The income he 
thence derived was at that period of his life of much importance to 
him, and I thought I had secured his friendship in return for the 
friendship I gave him. His assistance was of much value to me, his 
contributions, as will be readily understood, being of great worth to 
the magazine. 

After dinner Mr. Forster rose and proposed the health of Mr. 
Theodore Hook, the editor of the New Monthly Magazine. It was 
news to more than one of the guests. I at once said : " Forster, I 
can not drink that toast. If Mr. Hook is editor of the New Monthly 
Magazine, I have no business here." Some confusion ensued, and 
Poole sought to pour oil on the troubled waters by proposing my 
health in kindly and complimentary terms. 

But the end of it was I received from Mr. Colburn a few days 
afterward a check for a year's, instead of a half-year's, salary. My 
connection with the New Monthly ceased, and Mr. Theodore Hook 
became editor of that magazine. Mr. Colburn and I parted good 
friends, nor had I any misunderstanding with Mr. Hook. My sur- 
veillance would no doubt have been distasteful to him, no matter 
how useful it might have been to his employer. 

It was not likely that Forster and Hook could have got on 
amicably together. They did not : Forster's aid to the magazine 
soon ceased. He became a political writer, edited the Examiner in 
conjunction with Fonblanque, whom he succeeded ; obtained one 



" JOHN BULL" CONTRIBUTORS. 1 85 

of the Commissionerships in Lunacy ; and died " a prosperous gen- 
tleman " in 1876. 

Thus closed my connection with the New Monthly Magazine. 
Mr. Hook greatly impaired its sale, and it sank gradually, but sank 
certainly. He made it as outrageously Tory as Mr. Bulwer had 
made it violently Radical, and of course drove away numbers of 
subscribers. It was afterward consigned for a time to the care of 
poor Tom Hood. Eventually it was purchased by Harrison Ains- 
worth ; * but, although still living, it has ceased to hold a first place 
among the leading periodical publications of England. After my 
retirement from the New Monthly, I was induced in 1837 (as I have 
elsewhere stated) to accept the sub-editorship of the John Bull. 
Hook was in mental decline ; he had lost nearly all his power, and 
his wit was more like a jerk than the flow it had once been. He was 
paying the terrible tax inevitable upon what is falsely called a " gay 
life." He was then living almost entirely on brandy ; exhausted 
nature was prostrated, and a youth of pleasure gave place to an age 
of pain. Though by no means old, all of manhood in him — body, 
soul, and mind — had given way and left him a stranded wreck. f 

Although Hook was " a host in himself," he had, for the John 
Bull, of course, valuable contributors. I name some of them. 
Haynes Bayly was a graceful and prolific song-writer, the pet of the 
boudoir, and the patronizer of the hurdy-gurdy, some of whose 
songs, especially " I'd be a Butterfly " and " O no, we never mention 
her," are yet sung in antiquated drawing-rooms ; he was a tall, slight, 
and gentlemanly man. His opposite was the Rev. John Barham, a 
burly man, large-headed but small-featured, whose little eyes seemed 
always sparkling with unclerical humor — with difficulty suppressed. 
Tom Hill — who is said not only to have given a " character " to 
Hook, but to have been the original " Paul Pry " (which, by-the- 
way, Poole denied) — was at the age of eighty a sort of venerable 
Cupid ; he was a little square man whose full rosy cheeks were 
always laughing. It was of him that James Smith said no one could 
ever tell his age, for his baptismal register was lost in the Fire of 
London. Hook, improving upon the jest, said : " Oh, much older 
than that ; he is one of the little Hills that skipp'd in the Bible." 
His knowledge of "public" affairs was derived from the back-stairs 
of great houses ; and it was no rare thing to see him gossiping with 

* Ainsworth died so recently as 1882. I may have to write of him elsewhere. 

f The following is an extract from his diary: "January 19, 1837. — Another 
dreadful, miserable, dark, and dreary day. Letter from my sister-in-law ; she 
praises my industry, and pities my poverty. My poverty is painful, not on my 
own account, but on that of others ; and because, though I have through God's 
goodness been most fortunate in my literary undertakings, I have uselessly wasted 
not only money to a great extent in useless things, but have also wasted the time 
which would have reimbursed me. It is never too late to mend, and I now work 
night and day, and only wonder, when I look back, that I should have been so 
foolish as to waste the prime of life in foolish idleness." 



1 86 THE " TOWN." 

a crossing-sweeper before he paid his half-penny, or loitering about 
the area-gate of some aristocratic acquaintance to ascertain what 
he had in preparation for his dinner. Horace Twiss was also a con- 
tributor to the John Bull in its prime ; at least he was commonly 
thought to be one. His long and wearisome, though always ready, 
speeches in Parliament are forgotten, and he is remembered chiefly 
as the inventor of those digested paragraph-summaries that now 
precede the leaders in most newspapers.* 

There is no doubt that one of the most frequent and valued 
contributors to the John Bull was John Wilson Croker, long Secre- 
tary to the Admiralty. Lady Morgan, who hated him as intensely 
as he hated her, pictured him, as I have elsewhere stated, in " The 
O'Flahertys " as Crawley Junior. It is a frightful picture of servility, 
deception, dishonesty, and treachery ; certainly overdrawn, yet not 
greatly so, if the opinion of his contemporaries is to be accepted, 
confirmed as it has been by posterity. He had the dagger and the 
poison ever ready for friend or foe. 

Some years previous to my connection with the John Bull I tried 
the experiment of a weekly paper on my own account. That was 
the Town, a weakly concern, which the proprietors thought I could 
revive. I shared their opinion, and was its editor for one year, re- 
ceiving a thousand pounds by installments, and agreeing to pay all 
expenses in excess of that sum. I lost much by the experiment, 
and was glad to surrender it when the year of my contract was up ; 
yet I obtained the co-operation of Chitty, the renowned special 
pleader, who wrote copious notes on the several law and police cases 
of the week ; of Gilbert a Beckett, who contributed jokes and facetiae 
weekly ; and of Lytton Bulwer, and his brother Henry, the late Lord 
Dalling, who gave me frequent " leaders." 

I called the Town a "Conservative Whig" newspaper.! It sup- 
ported the policy of Sir Robert Peel, and certainly contained much 
that ought to have made an impression — which it did not make. 
But in those days of sevenpence in price, of fourpence duty on each 
paper, and of three shillings and sixpence tax on each advertisement, 
it was a hard push to make a newspaper pay. The publication was 

* There are many who remember Twiss as a member in the body of the House, 
and subsequently as an aid in the gallery. He was a son of the Irish traveler, who 
early in the present century gave great offense to Irish ladies ; it was asserted of 
him that one of the passages in his work was this : " If you look at an Irish lady, 
she'll bow and say ' Port, if you plase.' " I could find no such passage in his 
book. 

f The originator of the Town was Mansel Reynolds, some time editor of the 
"Keepsake," and an occasional writer of indifferent vers de societe. He was 
known to fame chiefly in connection with a strange traveling companion. Having 
been prescribed goat's milk, he thought it necessary, to have wherever he went, the 
companionship of the animal by which the milk was furnished ; and when traveling 
by mail-coach would take an outside place for the goat. 



THE " WATCHMAN." 



18/ 



abandoned not long after I surrendered it to its proprietors. It 
certainly passed out of my hands in a better, and not a worse, 
condition than that in which I found it. 

It was an easier and safer position than my proprietor-editorship 
of the Town, that I occupied when — in 1839 — I undertook the gen- 
eral management of the Britannia, started by Mr. Coulton, and 
furnished with sufficient capital by an eminent distiller. 

Mr. Coulton was then undistinguished in letters — indeed, he was 
in no way an author, and had written nothing up to that time ; yet 
he developed eventually into one of the very best of political writers 
and one of the soundest of literary critics, becoming subsequently 
editor of the Press, with which the Britannia was incorporated, and 
gaining the respect, esteem, and regard of all who knew him, for he 
was an upright and conscientious gentleman. The powerful con- 
tributor of "leaders" was the Rev. Dr. Croly, but the hard work of 
the paper fell on me. I have frequently written for it twenty 
columns of matter during the week — reviews, dramatic criticisms, 
literary and political notes, and leading articles ; and Mrs. Hall was 
a large contributor of sketches and visits to the homes of great men 
and women, afterward collected and published as " Pilgrimages to 
English Shrines." Robert Bell also aided, and there were other 
helpers, though none of note. 

For a few months I wrote the leading articles for the Watchman — 
the newspaper of the Wesleyan Methodists. I was merely engaged 
to do that work while the appointed editor, Dr. Sandwith, was taking 
his degree of M. D. at Edinburgh. He not being on the spot, a 
locum te?iens became a necessity. The principles of the new paper 
(then a novelty among the great dissenting body), as well as its 
private arrangements, were governed by " a Board " ; and the Rev. 
Dr. Bunting has more than once told me how puzzled its members 
were when they found that, contrary to the wishes of some of them, 
I was giving it a tone in politics far too closely bordering on Toryism. 
I did give, however, a Conservative tone to this important journal ; 
and, although it lost that tone in a degree when my aid ceased to be 
needed, I know it was useful to the party at that time ; and I 
received the following letter from Sir Robert Peel in acknowledg- 
ment. It is one of the few letters I have preserved, and I print 
it* 

* "Whitehall, January 12, 1835. 
" Sir : I beg leave to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 9th January ; 
and although you kindly release me from any obligation to notice the communica- 
tion which I have received from you, yet allow me to assure you that the purport of 
your letter and the general tenor and spirit of the publication which accompanies it 
have given me great satisfaction. 

" I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant, 
" S. C. Hall, Esq." " Robert Peel. 



!88 "BOOK OF BRITISH BALLADS." 

The " Book of British Ballads." — They were brilliant even- 
ings when so many young artists — all of rare promise — assembled at 
the Rosery, Old Brompton, as aids to illustrate the " Book of British 
Ballads." Each was then commencing a career in which he has 
since achieved renown : several hold now the highest places in art, 
and nearly all of them have acquired fortune as well as fame by the 
exercise of their profession. I must content myself with little more 
than a bare enumeration of their names. 

It was my custom to read the ballad I had determined on select- 
ing, and allot it to one of the artists ; supplying each with the wood 
blocks on which he was to draw the head and tail pieces and the side- 
slips — these side-slips sometimes numbering eight or ten. And in 
every instance they were not only designed but drawn on the Avood 
by the artists, some of them being thus employed for the first time, 
and, I believe, the last ; for it has always been difficult to induce the 
adoption of the material by British artists — as artists do in France. 

Ward had but recently returned from Italy, unspoiled by study 
of the old masters, and retaining his early inclination to perpetuate 
great men and leading incidents in English history. He was then 
unmarried, but not long afterward was wedded to the accomplished 
lady who was, in a measure, his pupil — Henrietta Ward, his name- 
sake, but not a relative — herself the descendant of a race of artists, 
James Ward having been her grandfather, George Raphael Ward 
her father ; while Jackson, the great portrait-painter, and Morland 
were related to her. She is now the mother of artists, for her own 
son and daughter are treading worthily in the steps of their parents. 

Poor Dadd was one of the set. His fate was a sad one. He 
was tried for the murder of his father, and acquitted on the ground 
of insanity.* I believe he still lives. For many years he was in the 
insane asylum then at Lambeth, and painted there several remark- 
able pictures, all of them containing, however, some passage that in- 
dicated the fell disease. It was hereditary, but augmented by a sun- 
stroke received during travels in the East of Europe. He was a 
young man of genius, and the works he produced were rapidly mak- 
ing their way to fame, when the terrible visitation came upon him. 
One of the most remarkable of his pictures — " Come unto these yel- 
low sands " — has been engraved for the Art Journal. I sometimes 
visited him at his residence in Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square. I 
could never tell why, but, although I liked him much, I had always 
in his presence a sense of apprehension. One evening, at my house, 
he was more than usually gloomy, spoke little, but his eyes seemed to 
roll about the assembled group. It was whispered by more than one, 
" What is the matter with Dadd ? " After his arrest a paper was 
found containing outline portraits of all the artists then present, with 

* He stabbed his father in a wood near Gravesend. Not only had there been 
no quarrel, but no cause of any kind, for he was a dutiful and affectionate son. 



SIX NOEL PA TON. 



189 



a dash of red paint across the throat of each. That was not many 
weeks before the fatal deed. His personal appearance was in his 
favor. He was somewhat tall, with good and expressive features, 
and gentlemanly demeanor. His career afforded sure promise of a 
great future — suddenly blighted by a terrible fate ! Poor fellow ! he 
had conceived an idea that he was perpetually haunted by an evil 
spirit that had taken the form of his father. The fatal stab was 
given, and death was instantaneous. With the shrewdness so com- 
mon in cases of insanity, he escaped, and was eventually taken on 
board one of the packet-boats that voyaged to France. He illustrated 
but one of the ballads, "Robin Goodfellow." 

Frith was then on the threshold of a career in which he has since 
achieved the highest distinction. It was easy and safe to predict his 
fame. So of Tenniel, whose first work, or nearly his first, honored 
that book. 

Noel Paton, I suppose I may say, began his career in art by his 
very admirable contributions to the volume, illustrating two of the 
ballads by his masterly pencil.* Paton was then little more than a 
youth — a student in the art of which he has since become the great 
master. He was, so to speak, brimful of genius. His mind was of 
a high order ; and if he had chosen to be a poet instead of a painter, 
he would have attained with the pen as lofty a prominence as he 
achieved by his pencil. Moreover, he was naturally amiable and 
upright ; moral power combined with intellectual vigor formed the 
groundwork of his character, while both were strengthened by a pure 
religious tone that has led to an advocacy of virtue in all the produc- 
tions that have issued from his easel. It is justifiable pride to have 
known him in his youth and to honor him in his vigorous manhood. 

If among the earliest of my fellow-workers I have the honor to 
class Noel Paton, it is a source of earnest gratification to me to make 
record of the fact that one of my latest books, " The Trial of Sir 
Jasper," 1875 — has tne advantage of containing a drawing from his 
pencil — a most wonderful bit of art — a partially draped skeleton 
quaffing a poison-cup of alcohol : " For he's a jolly good fellow, 
which nobody can deny." I can not, in common gratitude, pass 
without notice the aid the artist rendered in 1843 to Mrs. Hall in il- 
lustrating her story (published in the Art Journal, and subsequently 
as a volume), " Midsummer Eve : a Fairy Tale of Loving and be- 
ing Loved." I think there is no book of the kind that contains so 
many exquisite Art gems. That was mainly the result of Noel Pa- 
ton's generous labor to sustain me in my attempt to create a period- 
ical devoted to Art. 

* My happiest intercourse with Noel Paton (afterward Sir Noel Paton) was dur- 
ing a visit to the Burns Festival, when the birthday of the Scottish poet was com- 
memorated in the town of Ayr. To that interesting event I shall have other occa- 
sion to refer. 



I90 JOHN FRANKLIN. 

But the story — I may say, by way of parenthesis — was largely in- 
debted to another young man of genius, Huskisson, who slipped out 
of the world, no one knew when or how — at least I have never been 
able to learn. For the illustrations to " Midsummer Eve " I had also 
the aid of Stanfield, Creswick, Goodall, Maclise, Elmore, Frost, Top- 
ham, Franklin, Hulme, and Kenny Meadows, the greater number of 
these contributors working for no other reward than the gratification 
of aiding me in my undertaking. Yet, beautiful as the book is, it 
was by no means a pecuniary success. Two editions, published " on 
my own account," have not been productive. It is " out of print " 
now, and I suppose will always remain so. Yet I repeat, as far as 
the illustrations (numbering nearly two hundred) go — regarded as 
either drawings or engravings — no work so perfect has issued from 
the press during the century. 

It is said that he who is his own lawyer has a fool for his client. 
But what shall be said of the author who is his own publisher ? 
What a full volume of Recollections — with illustrative anecdotes — 
I might write, taking that text for my theme ! 

Among the most able and zealous of my aids, in the " Book of 
British Ballads," was John (now Sir John) Gilbert. He was then 
little more than feeling his way as a book-illustrator by drawing on 
wood, an art in which he attained a degree of excellence that has 
never been surpassed — never, indeed, " approachingly " equaled. It 
is pleasant to record that this great artist contributed to my later 
works, " The Trial of Sir Jasper," and " An Old Story," and did it 
so gracefully and generously as greatly to augment the value of the 
work. 

I may say exactly the same of Tenniel, another master-spirit of 
the age. If the "Book of Ballads," in 1842, was graced by him, so 
were " The Old Story " and " The Trial of Sir Jasper," in 1874 and 
1876. 

But my "sheet-anchor" in the "Book of Ballads" was John 
Franklin, an artist of prodigious capability, who never gave himself 
fair play ; frittering away his marvelous talent in comparatively small 
things, and avoiding the great works in which he would undoubt- 
edly have excelled. Some of his illustrations of the Ballads may be 
classed among the very best productions of their order. 

These memories of some of the artists who wrought at illustrat- 
ing the " Book of British Ballads " can hardly fail to interest my 
readers. There are others whom I must content myself with merely 
naming. Fairholt (of whom I shall write hereafter) here first es- 
sayed a higher task than that to which he had previously limited 
himself — delineating coins and mere antiquities. Mclan, whose de- 
signs were of some of the Scottish legends, and his accomplished and 
most estimable wife, then mistress of the National School of Art, 
illustrated two of them : so aided me, Redgrave and Herbert, then 
" associates " of the Royal Academy. Edward Corbould illustrated 



MRS. S. C. HALL AS EDITOR. 



191 



three. For the illustrations to more than one of the series I was in- 
debted to the eminent Art-scholar, W. B. Scott. 

It is hardly necessary to say that I strove to make the evening 
gatherings agreeable to the artists. They met there on several occa- 
sions the authors who were heading the epoch, as well as those who 
have since become famous ; I can not doubt that these " Evenings " 
have prominent places in the recollections of some who may, per- 
haps, associate with them the earliest draughts they drank of the 
Pierian spring, of which they have since quaffed so liberally. 

The engravings were of great excellence. The book, I believe, 
still ranks high in public favor. It long ago passed out of my hands. 
I am told that a new edition has been recently published, but / have 
never seen a copy of it. The edition which preceded the last, and 
succeeded the first, showed a fearful falling of as to the minor excel- 
lences of print and paper ; and so I suppose it is with regard to the 
last issued. The first edition is eagerly sought after, brings a large 
price whenever offered for sale, and will be hereafter accepted as one 
of the Art books of the century. The idea of the work was suggested 
to me by the publication in Germany of a very beautiful edition of 
the " Niebelungen-lied." It was on that ground I dedicated the book 
to Louis, King of Bavaria, who had done so much for Art at Munich, 
and whose reign is a glorious epoch in Art history. I believe the 
dedication was as respectful as any subject could have rendered to a 
sovereign, and as laudatory as any Art-lover could have given to a 
loyal Art patron ;. but I neglected a formality — of the necessity for 
which I was ignorant — and when I sent a copy, through my honored 
friend Dr. Ernst Forster, to the King, I was informed it could not 
be received, inasmuch as permission to present it had not been asked, 
but that it might be sent to the Public Library at Munich. 

When some years afterward I visited that city I was greeted with 
profound homage, and addressed as " Monseigneur " by the secre- 
tary-librarian, on his discovering me to be the creator of a book that 
had excited very general admiration. 

I have other editorial labors to speak of in this chapter — in addi- 
tion to my own. Mrs. Hall had conducted several periodical works. 
From 1826 to 1834 she edited the "Juvenile Forget-Me-Not," one of 
the annuals of that period. It contained contributions from many 
distinguished writers for the young ; among them, Mrs. Hemans, 
Mrs. Opie, Miss Mitford, Mrs. Hofland, etc. 

In 1852 she conducted, for one year, Sharpens London Magazine ; 
but Mr. Virtue, who had purchased it, sold it in 1853, and her direc- 
tion of it terminated. 

In 1862 she was applied to by Mr. John Maxwell to edit a new 
magazine, to which he gave the name of the St. James's. That con- 
nection ceased in 1863. We had many warnings that such would 
certainly be the result : but not until after the agreement was signed, 



192 



"SOCIAL NOTES." 



when it was too late to withdraw from the connection. We knew 
very little of Mr. Maxwell ; I think Mrs. Hall saw him but twice dur- 
ing their business intercourse. 

In the St. James's Magazine our honored and much-loved friend 
Mrs. Henry Wood published nearly the first of her valuable stories ; 
so did Miss Braddon ; there Robert Buchanan began to achieve 
fame, and was among its leading contributors. 

I should occupy space that may be better filled if I were to give 
more than a bare list of the works we have edited, and the books 
we have written. They exceed in number five hundred volumes. 
Among them are the " Book of Gems of British Poets," the " Book 
of British Ballads," the " Book of the Thames," the " Book of the 
Wye and South Wales," " Ireland, its Scenery and Character " ; the 
ten novels of Mrs. S. C. Hall ; her books for children ; the " Amu- 
let," eleven volumes ; the " Juvenile Forget-Me-Not," seven volumes ; 
" Pilgrimages to English Shrines " ; " Midsummer Eve " ; " Boons 
and Blessings " ; " Tales of Woman's Trials " ; " Sir Jasper " and 
" The Old Story" — Temperance Tales in verse ; "A Book of Mem- 
ories " ; " Baronial Halls," with a very long et-cetera. 

So long ago as 1823 I edited for one of the booksellers in "the 
Row " a weekly publication, entitled the Literary Observer. It lived 
for six months ; and, on looking over it now, I have reason to be- 
lieve I wrote every line of poetry, prose, and reviews of the sixteen 
pages of which it consisted. Some time afterward — in 1826 — I 
edited for a year a monthly magazine, the Spirit and Manners of the 
Age j in 1830 its title was changed to that of the British Magazine. 
That ceased in consequence of the failure of the publishers, West- 
ley and Davis ; and in the following year, as I have stated, I was 
promoted to the editorship of the New Monthly Magazine. 

Social Notes. — In 1878, in an unfortunate hour, I yielded to 
the request of the Marquis Townshend that I would edit a work on 
which he had set his heart. He was liberal in his resolve to spend 
money as a first step to success ; he placed unlimited confidence in 
me. My editorship continued for nearly a year ; his mistake was 
that when he received the work from my hands he gave it to others 
less capable than I was. That is all I will venture to say. I had 
undertaken the trust for a year, of which fifty weeks had elapsed, 
and I was glad to resign it into his lordship's hands. I had dis- 
charged a sub-editor whom I had engaged. The reasons for such 
discharge were subsequently made sufficiently notorious by three 
trials — Pepperell vs. the Marquis Townshend, for dismissal without 
sufficient cause ; and Pepperell vs. Hall, for alleged libel in comment- 
ing on the case in the journal I conducted. In the first, a verdict 
was given for the plaintiff ; in the second, no verdict was returned, 



SOCIAL NOTES." 



193 



the matter being settled out of court. It would be imprudent and 
unsafe for me to say more on that head ; if I were to say what I 
know, it would be to risk another action. The judge (Justice Field), 
in summing up the case, stated from the bench that my character 
was far too well established to dread that it could suffer from my 
consenting to judgment without demanding a verdict ; and my coun- 
sel, Mr. Matthews, Q. C, echoed that opinion to the Court. The 
case was tried a third time in 1881 — an action, Pepperell vs. Simpkin 
and Marshall, for selling the book containing the 'libel" that had 
not been pronounced a libel. In that case, the jury gave their verdict 
for the defendants — for me, in fact, as far as character was con- 
cerned. 

So much I feel it necessary to say as regards my disastrous con- 
nection with Social Notes. No single incident during that connec- 
tion compels me to take on myself an atom of blame. I did my 
best to discharge my duty faithfully and honorably. I procured the 
aid of some sixty of the best thinkers and writers of the age on all 
social subjects. 

In No. 48 of Social Notes I bade farewell to its subscribers, and 
recorded my grateful sense of the aid I had received from many 
men and women of great ability, of lofty positions, and of earnest 
zeal to advance and promote social progress, to exhibit and explain 
social requirements, and to advocate social reforms.* 

The work had made its mark, with a prospect of occupying a 
very prominent position among the more useful of the periodicals of 
the day, and, to say the least, fulfilled the word of promise — pledged 
at the outset. 



* I print the names of a few of the many 
Rev. Canon Farrar, D. D. 
Robert Rawlinson, C. B. 
Florence Nightingale. 
Sir Rutherford Alcock, K. C. B. 
Campbell Foster, Q. C. 
Sir Julius Vogel. 
Lady Verney. 
Thomas Hughes, Q. C. 
William Hoyle. 
Sir Theodore Martin, K. C. B. 
William Howitt. 



who were writers for this publication ; 
Ernest Hart, M. D. 
B. W. Richardson, M. D. 
Rev. J. G. Wood, M. A. 
The Recorder of Dublin. 
Charles Mackay, LL. D. 
James Macaulay, M. D. 
Martin F. Tupper. 
Prof. D. T. Ansted, F. R. S. 
Percy Fitzgerald. 
Mrs. S. C. Hall. 
Prebendary Irons, D. D. 



13 



RECOLLECTIONS. 
ART JOURNAL: ITS ORIGIN AND PROGRESS. 

In December, 1838, I dined with the print-publisher, Mr. Hodg- 
son, of the then firm of Hodgson and Graves, the successors of 
Moon, Boys, and Graves, who had followed Hurst and Robinson, 
the proximate, but not immediate, successors of Alderman Boydell, 
the renowned publisher of the folio Shakspere, which contained en- 
gravings from the most famous painters of the epoch. 

Moon, not long after joining it, separated from the firm, and con- 
tinuing business on his own account in Threadneedle Street, became 
Lord Mayor of London : was created a baronet ; and died a pros- 
perous gentleman. The firm is now carried on by Henry Graves 
and Co., and the premises are where Hurst and Robinson held them, 
in Pall Mall, adjoining the old Opera-House. Moon was a liberal 
and judicious publisher, who treated artists well, and to whom they 
were attached. The engravings he issued are numerous, including 
the best works of the artists of the age ; but the publication on 
which his fame mainly rests is the " Holy Land " — a work in lithog- 
raphy, from sketches by David Roberts ; by which Roberts got little : 
the publisher much. 

At the dinner referred to, as given by Hodgson, several Royal 
Academicians were present ; one of them, Charles Landseer, in re- 
sponding to his health, expressed regret that there was no periodical 
publication to represent the Arts, and referred to me as an author 
capable of remedying the deficiency. Hodgson said that if I would 
edit such a work, he would supply capital. I declined the proposal. 
I was working hard for the Bar, resolved to labor for it as my pro- 
fession. 

It can not be arrogance to say it was a misfortune that led me 
from it ; for had I toiled at Law as I have done for Letters, year 
after year, all these years, I could not have failed to attain eminence. 

Subsequently, Hodgson a second time pressed this task upon me, 
and after much hesitation I consented to undertake it, provided he 
would give me a written promise not to interfere in any way with 
my duties as editor, and never to require from me the insertion of a 



ORIGIN OF THE "ART JOURNAL." ^5 

single line of which I did not approve. He gave the written guar- 
antee. I took as much care as I could — by prudent foresight — to 
prevent a publisher or producer of engravings, in any degree, direct- 
ing or influencing a journal that was to be a just representative of 
the interests of artists and Art. 

There was then no such representative in any country of Europe : 
one or two works, issued in Paris, did indeed deal with the subject, 
but included acting, music, and dancing in its monthly programme. 

During one of my absences in Ireland Mr. Hodgson directed the 
printer to substitute, in lieu of a review I had written regarding the 
Roberts " collection of drawings in the " Holy Land," some depre- 
catory remarks. The circumstance led to a separation between us ; 
and at the end of the first year I paid him the sum of ^200 to re- 
coup his alleged loss, and so became "proprietor" of the publica- 
tion. 

Such was the origin of the Art Journal, which for ten years bore 
as its title the Art Union. The first part was issued on the 15th 
February, 1839 : stamped to go by post, and priced at eightpence. 
The number printed was seven hundred and fifty. 

Nothing could have been less encouraging than its prospects at 
starting : there were few or no writers on Art, while the condition of 
British art was not only discouraging but disheartening. The great- 
er artists of the century " flourished," indeed, but Art was, with 
scarcely an exception, to them only a bare means of subsistence. 
Several of those who have since become famous " for all time " ob- 
tained sufficient incomes by giving lessons : a hundred pounds was 
rarely obtained by any one of them for a picture. I have since seen 
at public sales paintings sold for thousands of pounds for which the 
artist received less than a hundred. 

Even portrait-painters were hardly exceptions to this rule : Law- 
rence did, indeed, get large prices for Court pictures of great men, 
and in other ways found his art productive. But I have seen Jack- 
son hard at work on a portrait — and he produced many such — for 
which he received ten guineas ; they were for engravings in the 
Evangelical Magazine — works of a high order of art. 

Sculpture was in a still more deplorable condition : Chantrey had 
many commissions for busts, and a few for portrait statues, and he 
and Bailey and Westmacott some patronage for monumental tributes ; 
but Foley was working for one of them — receiving a mason's wages 
per diem — and great Flaxman, not long before that time, had been 
rewarded by a few shillings apiece, for his immortal designs. So 
little was the grand art understood that, when I ventured on the issue 
of " statue plates," I had numerous warnings that I was ruining the 
publication ; and not once, but several times, a plate of a semi-nude 
figure, torn through, was sent to me by post, with protests against 
such attempts to introduce "indecencies" into families. Of late 



196 



BRITISH SCULPTURE. 



years the statue plates have been the most popular of the three 
monthly engravings.* 

There is nothing in my past, connected with Art, from which I 
derive so much happiness as I do from this — that I have been the 
means of aiding British sculpture. Somewhere about 1828, a volume 
of examples of the art — edited by T. K. Hervey, a poet of some 
eminence, and for several years editor of the Athenceum — was pub- 
lished. It was a failure. I purchased the plates in 1843, and com- 
menced their re-issue in the Art Journal, following them up by en- 
gravings of original productions by the most renowned sculptors of 
the world — giving natural preference to those that were British. I 
believe — and continue to believe — that God's most perfect work, 
when represented in sculpture, contributes to the loftier and nobler 
sentiments, and not to the baser sensations, of humankind. But I 
carefully put aside such productions as those of Pradier and others 
— sensual copyists of beauty of features and grace of form. 

The difference between French and Greek art seems to me sim- 
ply this — the Frenchman pictures a woman as if she had taken off 
her clothes to be looked at ; the Greek represents one who has never 
known clothes at all, who is naked but not ashamed, and who thinks 
it no more wrong to let her whole form be seen than she does to 
show ungloved hands. I consider British sculptors have followed 
the examples of the Greek, and not the French, professors of the art. 

In the days to which I go back it was not unusual, at stately 
mansions, to cover up statues on reception-nights ; I can call to 
mind one case in which each statue of marble was gifted with an 
apron. Ladies then were rarely seen in the sculpture-room of the 
British Museum. I strove to teach that an artist who copied from 
the nude was no more necessarily impure than is a surgeon who 
enters a room to visit a patient into whose case he must inquire ; and 
it is to me a happy conviction that I overcame a prejudice then al- 
most universal in England. 

It seemed a visionary scheme to issue a periodical that should be 
only a representative of art — depending for success on the support of 
artists, art patrons, and art lovers. But that such a publication was 
needed there could be no question. The newspapers that now print 
many columns of elaborate and judicious criticisms on every exhibi- 

* I remember condoling with John Foley as regarded the position of the sculp- 
tor's art at that time in England. I did so over the model of his great work, Bac- 
chus and Ino, which lay covered with dust in a corner of his " studio," in the 
Hampstead Road. 

He as little expected to obtain a commission to produce it in marble as he did 
an order to rebuild St. Paul's. For some time previously he had been working for 
a somewhat more prosperous professor, his " wages " being eight shillings a day. 
It was much the same with Joseph Durham, and no doubt with all the sculptors of 
the period. 



BRITISH ART 



197 



tion and every art work, then seldom devoted to the subject more 
than a few lines. / had to create a public for Art : by which my proj- 
ect might be sustained ; yet, for a long time, it was a wild experi- 
ment : progress was so slow that for the first nine years the work did 
not meet its expenses in any one year. I persevered, loving my task, 
having not only hope for it, but faith in it. My duty was to make 
the work respected as well as popular : so to blend information and 
instruction with interesting and useful intelligence, as to give it rank 
among the higher and better periodicals of the time and country. It 
is needless to say that in my efforts to " achieve fortune " I had many 
obstacles to encounter, and serious difficulties to surmount. 

There was literally no " patronage " for British Art. Collectors 
— wealthy merchants and manufacturers — did indeed buy pictures as 
befitting household adornments, but they were " old masters " with 
familiar names ; canvases that had never been seen by the artists to 
whom they were attributed ; copies or imitations by " 'prentice 
hands," that were made to seem<?/r/by processes which I persistently 
exposed — printing, month after month, the Custom-House returns of 
pictures imported, and showing that a larger number of Titians, Ra- 
phaels, and Rubenses paid duty in a year than those masters had 
produced during their lives. On the other hand, I made manifest 
the policy of buying only such pictures as could be readily identified 
— certified by the artists who were living ; urging the probability that 
they would increase and not decrease in value, while it was almost 
certain that so-called " old masters " would ultimately be worth little 
more than the value of the panels and frames. 

I convinced those who desired to purchase pictures. I destroyed, 
by conclusive evidence and continual exposure, the extensive and 
nefarious trade in "old masters." I have lived to see such "old 
masters " valued according to their worthlessness, and a thorough 
transfer of patronage to modern Art. 

It is desirable that I maintain my assertion by proofs, from pub- 
lic documents as well as from my own personal experience. 

In 1863 there was a sale at Christie's of the collection of Mr. 
Bicknell, whose son had married the daughter of David Roberts. 
Father and son are now both dead : they were merchants at South- 
wark, but resided somewhere about Clapham. I published a list of 
the comparative sums paid for his paintings and drawings by Mr. 
Bicknell, and the sums they brought at the sale. I extract some of 
them from that report : 

Items. — " Street in Cairo " (^50), 505 guineas ; " Melrose Abbey " (^40), 
260 guineas ; " Interior of St. Gomar, Lieri " (^300), 1,370 guineas ; " Ruins 
of Baalbec " (^£250), 750 guineas : these were by D. Roberts. " The Syrens," 
W. E. Frost (,£54), 294 guineas; "The Heiress," Leslie (£300), 1,260 guin- 
eas ; " The Village of Gillingham," Miiller (60 guineas), 390 guineas ; " The 



198 MODERN ARTISTS. 

Impenitent," T. Webster (^ioo), 350 guineas. " Shipping Coast near St. 
Malo " (150 guineas), 1,230 guineas; " Lago di Garcia" (150 guineas), 820 
guineas; " Beilstein " (250 guineas), 1,500 guineas; "Pic du Midi d'Ossau 
(700 guineas), 2,550 guineas: these four were by Stanfield. "Early Morn- 
ing on the Sussex Coast " (320 guineas), 960 guineas ; " Selling Fish " (400 
guineas), 1,170 guineas: both by Collins. "The Stepping Stones," T. Cres- 
wick (70 guineas), 250 guineas; "The Prize Calf" (400 guineas), 1,800 
guineas ; " The Two Dogs " (£300), 2,300 guineas ; " The Highland Shep- 
herd " G£35o), 2,230 guineas : three pictures by Landseer. " Raising the 
Maypole," F. Goodall (^295), 600 guineas. " Antwerp " (300 guineas), 2,510 
guineas; " Helvoetsluys " (270 guineas), 1,600 guineas; " Wreckers " (275 
guineas), 1,890 guineas ; " Venice : the Campo Santo " (250 guineas), ^2,000 ; 
"Venice: the Giudecca" (252 guineas), 1,650 guineas; " Ehrenbreitstein " 
(^401), 1,800 guineas ; " Port Ruysdael " (300 guineas), 1,900 guineas : all by 
Turner. In the water-color drawings there was a notable increase in value. 
" A Bunch of Grapes, two Peaches, and Rose Hips," W. Hunt (25 guineas), 
112 guineas ; " Amiens " (8 guineas), 1 10 guineas ; " Interior of a Cathedral " 
(6 guineas), 106 guineas; " Porch of Chartres Cathedral" (6 guineas), 120 
guineas : by Prout. " Bridlington Harbor " (36 guineas), 530 guineas ; 
" Rivaulx Abbey " (50 guineas), 460 guineas ; " Rivaulx Abbey — Evening " 
(42 guineas), 600 guineas; " Traeth Mawr" (25 guineas), 420 guineas; 
" Crowborough Hill " (25 guineas), 760 guineas : all by Copley Fielding* 

Miiller sold his " Chess-Players " for ^100 or less (he himself 
told me he had never received more than that sum for any picture 
he ever painted). Mr. Bolckow bought it in 1864 for ^4,200. In 
1844 I edited (for the engravers, Messrs. Finden) a book published 
in periodical form, " The Beauties of the Poet Moore." I gave com- 
missions to several of the young and rising artists — among them, 
Frith, Elmore, Ward, paying for each painting the sum of ten guin- 
eas. When the work was completed, the proprietors desired to dis- 
pose of the collection together or separately, and with that view they 
exhibited them at the publishers', Messrs. Chapman and Hall, in the 
Strand, only requiring to get back their cost. I do not believe there 
were buyers for a half-dozen of them at the price of 10 guineas each. 
The average price they would now bring is probably 150 guineas.f 

I remember visiting a Mr. Meigh, one of the leading Staffordshire 
manufacturers. Among other works and pictures I noticed a Ru- 
bens, for which he had paid ,£500 ; and a joint production of Web- 
ster and Creswick, which he had bought for 60 guineas. He was 

* Mr. J. B. Cumming, of King Street, Cheapside, some years later sent this 
statement to the newspapers : " Thirteen years since my father bought three draw- 
ings of Mr. Vokins, the dealer, for which he gave no guineas. They were by 
David Cox, viz., • The Valley of Clwyd,' * Green Lanes in Staffordshire,' and ' The 
Hayfield.' After enjoying them for twenty years I regret to say my father was in- 
duced to part with them to Mr. Quilter, the accountant, for 1,250 guineas, and they 
were resold at Christie's in 1875 for the fabulous sum of £6,047 IOS - The ' Green 
Lanes' fetched £1,407 ; ' The Valley of Clwyd,' £1,627 10s. ; and ' The Hayfield ' 
was knocked down at £2,950." 

f In 1878 I found four of the series at a dealer's in Brighton, and purchased 
them. They were by the second and not the first class artists. 



FAB RICA TIONS. 



199 



than the former, and you will find I am right if ever you sell your 
somewhat startled when I said, " I value the latter at much more 
collection." He afterward sold them. The Webster and Creswick 
sold for ^"300, and the Rubens was bought in for ^80 ! 

I might very largely extend this division of my work, for I have 
facts enough at my command to fill pages ; but mere extension is 
needless. 

I may wind it up, however, by again stating that not once, but 
many times, I have been present at a private view of the Royal 
Academy in its old rooms in Somerset House, where, excepting por- 
traits of men and women, of horses and of dogs, there was not a single 
picture sold by any artist throughout the day, or the price of any picture 
inquired about.* Well I remember the excitement that was produced 
in the great room when a buzz of astonishment passed through it — 
" Lord Lansdowne has bought Turner's picture for ^200 ! " 

I commenced the Art Journal 'with a resolve that if I could not 
induce people to patronize British Art, I would at all events prevent 
their buying " old masters " — pictures not one in one hundred of 
which had ever been seen by the artist to whom they were attributed. 
The Comptroller of the Customs of that time — about 1842 — was a 
personal friend. Confidentially, he supplied me with the returns of 
imported pictures, then liable to duty ; and I was soon able to show 
that, month after month, a vast number of paintings, professedly by 
the great masters of all times and countries, passed through the Lon- 
don Custom-House. 

Again, I obtained the co-operation of a man who had been a pict- 
ure-dealer and " trader." He revealed to me all the secrets of the 
trade " : how modern imitations were prepared for the " market," in 
some cases giving the names of the artists who forged them. He 
showed me a house in Richmond where, to his knowledge, eighty 
" Canalettis " had been " baked." It acquired the name of the " Ca- 
naletti Manufactory." Thus armed, I commenced a crusade against 
the picture-dealers. 

The extent to which the sale of imported pictures was carried on 
will scarcely be credited now. From 1833 to 1838, inclusive, there 
were imported 45,642 pictures, paying, at the rate of five shillings on 
each picture, and, further, one shilling per square foot, a duty of 
;£i 1,870. The duties had been diminished in 1826. f Previous to 
that date imported pictures, measuring under four feet, paid each a 

* The private view of 1880, at which I attended, was the fifty-fourth private 
view at which I had been present. I believe I did not from accident, or illness, 
or any other cause, miss one private view in fifty-four years. 

f " In reducing the duties from almost an exorbitant to a nominal charge, Gov- 
ernment could not have contemplated the mischief that resulted from the change — 
an influx of worthless and injurious copies, which, besides preventing sales of works 
by our own artists, can not but have impaired the public taste." — Art Journal, 1839. 



200 TRIAL FOR LIBEL. 

duty of ^3 8s., and those of four feet and over a duty of ;£io 4s. 
Out of 81,000 pictures brought over, the number painted by masters 
to whom they were attributed possibly reached 200. Importation 
was not, however, the sole channel that inundated the country with 
these forgeries. Large numbers were of home manufacture, and 
owed their production to the dishonesty of needy English artists and 
the manufactory of " old masters " established at Richmond, and 
elsewhere. It was high time that something should be done. 

The greater number of these frauds were copies by " 'prentice 
hands," and had to be made to look aged. This was easily effected 
by experts in the nefarious trade. At Richmond there was an oven 
where they were usually baked, and dirt was easily produced that a 
wetted handkerchief could not rub off. Many of them were placed 
in old frames, or in frames made to look old. 

And so the vilest daubs were sent into the market. Large sums 
as to value were placed upon them ; they cost shillings where shillings 
were expected to bring pounds, and did very often bring pounds from 
the ignorant or unwary who believed the stories that were never lack- 
ing — first, as to the renowned galleries out of which they were se- 
cured ; next, as to the difficulties of " getting them out " of the coun- 
tries of which they had been the treasures ; and, lastly, as to the 
intrinsic evidence that always " spoke for itself." It is easy to im- 
agine the tales the cheats poured into the listening ears of the dupes. 
In 1845, some years after the commencement of my attacks upon im- 
posture, I wrote as follows {Art Union, vol. vii, pp. 121 and 122) : 
" Although we are in possession of a multitude of facts, and well 
know the persons implicated in this atrocious scheme of imposture — 
not only dealers, for, we shame to say, artists are their confederates — 
prudence must induce us to withhold the names of culprits in these 
scandalous proceedings." The labor was not without its dangers. I 
received several threatening letters, but went on boldly with the work, 
exposing the traffic and the traffickers, and at length was — caught ! 
The traffickers had inundated every town of importance in England 
with these frauds, conveying them in vans from one place to another. 
Prominent among the nefarious dealers was a man named Hart. I 
had protested against his tricks on several occasions. At length he 
advertised a sale at Birmingham. I did not see it, but a printed 
catalogue was sent to me. I took it for granted that the collection 
resembled his previous collections ; and, as it contained many emi- 
nent names, I treated it as I had treated all his former exhibitions, 
and proclaimed the sale to be a fraud. As the result of that article, 
he brought an action against me for libel, and it was tried at War- 
wick on the 28th of March, 1855. 

I defended the action, and took some pains to trace out the his- 
tory of the pictures exhibited at the Birmingham sale. The result 
was a verdict for the plaintiff, damages forty shillings. Respecting 
the verdict, I wrote in the Art Journal at that time, We say at once 



HART VERSUS HALL. 201 

that with the verdict we were entirely satisfied. The jury could have 
given no other." 

The plaintiff laid the venue in Warwickshire, a privilege to which 
he was entitled, and the action was tried at the Warwick Assizes by 
Baron Alderson and a special jury. Mr. Macaulay (Q. C.) and Mr. 
Hayes were counsel for the plaintiff ; Mr. John Smith, of Birming- 
ham, was his attorney. For the defendant Mr. Mellor (Q. C.) and 
Mr. Field were counsel ; * his attorneys were Baxter, Rose, and Nor- 
ton, of London. 

The damages were laid at one thousand pounds. 

I put in four pleas in justification : first, the technical plea" Not 
guilty," respecting which I wrote in the Art Journal of the time : 
■ Our readers are no doubt aware that this general plea of ' Not 
guilty ' is merely a form of law ; the authorship of the articles was 
from the first admitted by the defendant, but it did not follow that 
they were 'libels' until so pronounced by a jury." My second plea 
was, in brief, that as regarded " divers of the pictures sold at the 
same sale of pictures at Birmingham," the allegations made were 
true. The third plea touched upon the reputation of the defendant 
as a dealer in pictures, showing that he had repeatedly offered for 
sale and sold forged pictures, purporting to be the productions of re- 
nowned artists ; and when through such practices his name had fallen 
into general disrepute, he had disposed of the forgeries under the 
shelter of an alias. And for a fourth plea, being to so much of the 
second count " as alleges or imputes that the plaintiff, before the 
said sale at Birmingham, had been guilty of knowingly and deceit- 
fully selling, as genuine productions of artists of celebrity, pictures 
which he then well knew were not the productions of such artists ; 
the defendant says that the said allegations were and are true, and 
that the said plaintiff was thereby guilty of fraud and dishonesty as 
a picture-dealer." 

While his character was being assailed and defended, the plaintiff 
did not venture to " show " in court. I had endeavored to subpoena 
him ; he was nowhere to be found ; he dared not meet a cross- 
examination. 

Before I went into court I was warned that the Judge would 
be " dead against me." It was notorious that he was severely hostile 
to the freedom of comments by the Press, and treated every editor 
as a personal foe. 

This passage is from the Times report of the trial : " The 
learned Judge, in summing up, spoke with severity of the offense 

* Both these eminent lawyers became judges — Baron Field is happily living , 
in 1881 he tried the only other case of libel in which I was defendant, the case of 
Pepperell vs. Hall, and when some insinuation against my character was made, his 
Lordship took occasion to say " that character stood too high to be prejudiced by 
any opponent. He had himself known me for forty years, and could testify to my 
integrity and moral worth." 



202 THE VERDICT. 

of publishing in newspapers imputations upon the character of 
individuals without sufficient grounds, and expressed his opinion 
that, if people would assume to themselves functions which nobody- 
expected them to discharge, and, under a sense of what they chose 
to call duty, inflict serious injury upon others, they ought to be com- 
pelled to make a full compensation for the wrong so inflicted." 

The jury retired to consider their verdict. After an absence of 
ten minutes they returned into court, and found a verdict for the 
plaintiff, damages forty shillings, the lowest sum that carried costs. 

No one in court was more astonished, and surely no one more 
gratified, than I was by the result, for the Judge had almost com- 
manded the jury to mulct me in heavy damages.* 

The trial was reported in every newspaper of the kingdom ; the 
natural result followed : merchants and manufacturers who were 
bent on adorning their mansions with paintings, thus warned, would 
purchase no more Raphaels and Titians ; they bought modern 
pictures instead. The trial was well worth what it cost. I had not 
then, and have not had since, the slightest doubt that to the case 
Hart vs. Hall may be traced a commencement of the career of 
prosperity that has since awaited the productions of " British 
artists." f 

* I had promised my counsel, Mr. Mellor and Mr. Field, who were apprehen- 
sive of my committing myself and injuring my cause by eagerness in self-defense, 
that I would not say a word during the trial. But I was released from my promise 
when the trial was over. When the verdict was given in, the Judge had retired, 
leaving his representative to take it. When I heard it, I bowed to the jury and 
said, " Thank you, gentlemen : I have received from the jury more justice than 
I have from the Judge." "Sir,'' exclaimed the angry Judge's substitute, "that 
is another libel ! " " Sir," I answered, " I know it is ; but I will say more than 
that : though I am in this court convicted of a libel, I shall leave the court a 
prouder man than I entered it ! " I bowed again and retired. No doubt if the 
Judge had been present I should have been committed for contempt ; his presence 
would not have deterred me from giving vent to my feelings : a more unfair and 
one-sided charge was never delivered. Luckily for me, a majority of the jury knew 
the plaintiff, and had had dealings with him. 

f Very soon after the trial this letter was printed — signed by Stanfield, Ward, 
Frost, Foley, Goodall, Cooke, Harding, and twenty-four other British artists : 
" London, June, 1855. Sir : The undersigned beg to call your attention to a sub- 
ject in which they are of opinion that the honor and interests of British artists are, 
to some extent, involved. You are probably aware that Mr. S. C. Hall has had to 
sustain an action for libel at the suit of Mr. Louis Hart, a picture-dealer, and that 
the costs of the action have been very heavy. We believe you will agree with us 
that the course Mr. Hall has pursued for a series of years as editor of the Art 
Journal, has been of great service to Art and artists ; and we trust you will also 
coincide with us in thinking it would be only just and right in the artists and Art- 
lovers generally to manifest their sympathy with him, more especially as he has 
been advocating not his own cause, but that of the profession and the public. We 
desire, therefore, in order to meet the views of the general body of artists, so far as 
we have been able to ascertain them, to obtain subscriptions for the purpose of 
presenting to Mr. Hall some suitable testimonial, as an indication of our sense of 
his services in this respect." 

The costs were, therefore, in a great measure (but not entirely) met by the 



PICTURE SALES. 



203 



The Report for 1877 of the Art Union of London thus sums up 
the result of the war that for many years I had waged, almost single- 
handed, and under circumstances of much discouragement : 

" Ample evidence of the great advance in matters of design will 
be found in the engravings of objects of Art manufacture given, 
from time to time, in the Art Journal, whose able conductor has 
devoted so much energy, judgment, and zeal to the improvement of 
the Arts of this country, and who more especially, by persevering 
attacks, succeeded in driving from the market those spurious imi- 
tations of old masters which alone found purchasers among our Art 
collectors thirty years ago ; in place of which fabulous prices are 
now paid for the works of British artists, both of present and past 
times, and for this, if it were the only good thing he had done, Mr. 
Carter Hall deserves a large amount of gratitude from the artists of 
this country." 

I resumed and continued the crusade against fraudulent dealers 
in old masters, my task becoming more safe and comparatively easy : 
not against those who practice honestly a legitimate branch of Brit- 
ish commerce, but against those who conduct it upon principles dis- 
astrous to Art, very prejudicial to the artist, and dishonest as regards 
the public. At that time I, moreover, exposed the evils of certain 
picture-auctions, and the true nature of the pictures usually sold at 
such auctions, giving occasionally the actual histories of " rare origi- 
nals," where they were manufactured, what they really cost, and the 
several processes through which they had passed to make them 
appear genuine. 

I must be content to give one or two cases of the prices brought 
for " old masters," soon after this trial : 

An article in the Art Union for February, 1846, contained what 
follows : " It is quite farcical to note the shabby prices obtained at 
these sales. At Messrs. Christie's, on the 10th of January, lot 89, 
named ' Correggio,' was knocked down at 13J., and lot 82, with the 
same great name, got no bidder at all, but was joined to the succeed- 
ing lot, called ' Bramver,' and the two united brought 24^. Again, 
at Phillip's, on the 17th, lot 16, ' Murillo,' sold for half a guinea ; 
lot 20, ' Guercino,' the same amount ; lot 100, an historical subject, 
' Tintoretto,' gs." A bona fide sale took place in the city by a re- 
spectable auctioneer, not a professed " picture-rigger." The pictures 
were the property of an unlucky enthusiast, who assigned them and 
other valuable property for the benefit of his creditors, to trustees, 
in satisfaction of his debts. " The Madonna," Sasso Ferrato (cost 
£60), sold for £6 ; " Venice," Canaletti (^20), ^5 ; " Dido," A. 

subscriptions of these artists. They were very heavy : I had of course to pay those 
of the plaintiff and about thirty witnesses on both sides, including their expenses in 
going to and from Warwick, and their hotel bills there. 



204 



MY RIVALS. 



Kauffman (^20), £3 $s. ; " Christ and the Centurion," Le Brun 
(^20), £4 15s. ; "Landscape," Zuccarelli (,£88), £g xos. ; "Cupid 
bound," A. Kauffman {£15), £2 i$s. ; "St. Catherine," Correggio 
(£ 2 °), £4 ; " Venice," Canaletti (^20), £6 6s. ; " Holy Family," 
Raphael (£60), £7 ; "Idem," Raphael {£160), £2% 17s. 6d. All 
the pictures were handsomely framed. At another auction, in the 
city, the following were " sold " : A Titian, described as " a splendid 
specimen of the master," sold for £$ 16s. ; a Murillo, a capital pict- 
ure, for £4 6s. ; a Raffaelle, portrait of himself, £3 15s. ; a Guido, 
" a splendid picture," for £4 4^., and so forth. 

In brief, the nefarious trade expired from the day the report of 
the trial Hart 7>s. Hall was promulgated. No merchant or manufact- 
urer would look at a " Raphael " or a " Rubens," and dealers were 
compelled to dispose of their stock at little more than the cost of the 
frames. 

The result may be readily foreseen : from that day the harvests 
of British artists commenced to be gathered in. 

I have thus given an outline — it can be nothing more — of the 
progress of the Art Journal, from its commencement in 1839 to the 
termination of my editorship in December, 1880.* 

I have stated that my difficulties were many, serious, and heavy. 
They grew. Among them were such as arose from insufficient cap- 
ital. They will be enough indicated by one fact : during the first 
ten years I paid the stationer 52^. a ream for the same paper that 
was subsequently supplied at 39J. a ream. I was informed by the 
accountant that in forty months that stationer received ^70,000 in 
payment for paper ; these months included those of the double num- 
bers incident to the Exhibition of 1851. 

I had little to fear from opposition : inducements to rivalry were 
not strong ; for nearly forty of its forty-two years I claimed for the 
Art Journal that it was " the only journal in Europe that adequately 
represented the fine arts and the arts of manufacture " ; and surely 
I might have added " in America." In that great country of the 
present and the future, the Journal was a powerful auxiliary to the 
artists and manufacturers who sought to attain excellence : it always 
had a large circulation there. A few years back, however, an enter- 
prising publisher issued the American Art Journal. A considerable 
portion of it was printed from the stereotyped pages of the English 

* I had in type a list of artists — British and foreign painters and sculptors — 
whose works have been engraved for the Art Journal from the commencement to 
the close of my editorship. But to publish it is needless. There is not a single 
artist who obtained renown during the first half of the century whose name would 
not be found in the list. By far the major part of them are line engravings — an 
art that is now all but departed in England, and, indeed, in Germany and France. 



AUSPICIOUS AIDS. 



205 



work ; but gradually large original additions of letterpress and en- 
gravings were added to it in New York : these additions were of the 
very highest character, enabling it to claim the rank of a rival en- 
titled to all respect. America is now in that way not a whit behind 
England. 

Some rivals, but none to dread, I had during my earlier struggles 
for a position. In March, 1843, an artist and an Art scholar (E. V. 
Rippingille) commenced the Artists' and Amateurs' Magazine. In 
February, 1844, he printed his "farewell address"; it contained 
these ominous words, " As regards the success of my project, it is a 
failure " — his was "but the fate of all who have attempted to interest 
or instruct people on the subject of Art." Not long afterward a like 
effort was made, and with a like result, by Mr. John Landseer, the 
father of Sir Edwin. His venture was called The Probe ; the title 
indicated its prevailing character. They were both artists, and art- 
ists are seldom generous critics. 

Several auspicious circumstances had combined to aid me in my 
hopeful task. First, the growing wealth and intelligence of British 
merchants and manufacturers. Next, the influence of some of the 
picture-dealers in the manufacturing districts, who created a desire, 
if not a taste (that was the gradual result of persevering zeal), in pros- 
perous Manchester and its rich locality. Next, by the always ad- 
mirable working of the Art Union of London, under the judicious 
direction of George Godwin, F. R. S., and Lewis Pocock, F. S. A., 
and its secretary, Mr. Watson. Next, the great increase of provin- 
cial Schools of Art in association with the Department of Science 
and Art, of which in 1840 there were three ; in 1880 there are one 
hundred and fifty, hardly a provincial town of note being now with- 
out this valued auxiliary to Art knowledge, Art study, and Art prac- 
tice. Next, in 1849, came the invaluable co-operation of Mr. Vernon, 
who, before he presented his great gift to the nation, gave to me the 
right to engrave and publish the whole of his collected pictures. 
The Journal then became a success ; it was largely augmented when 
in 1854, her Majesty and the " Good Prince " Consort accorded to 
me the privilege of engraving and publishing one hundred and fifty 
selected pictures from their private collections ; * and it was greatly 
aided by my illustrated " Report of the first Great International Ex- 
hibition, 185 1," the public paying for the Journal, during that mem- 
orable year and part of the year succeeding, no less a sum than 
^72,000. 

* In according that most beneficial grant, his Royal Highness was most gracious- 
ly pleased to say he considered the Art Journal to be a work " extremely well con- 
ducted," as calculated to be of much service, " and his patronage of which it had 
given him much pleasure to afford." During fourteen years the Art Journal was 
annually dedicated to his Royal Highness. Since his lamented death it has been 
dedicated to his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales. 



206 MY ASSISTANTS. 

Especially, and above all, I must attribute the prosperity of the 
Art Journal to the generous help I received from very many artists ; 
to the aid given me by the rapidly increasing collectors of British 
pictures ; to the co-operation of many — indeed, almost all — the able 
writers on Art subjects ; * and certainly to a general belief that I was 
doing in a right spirit the work I had undertaken to do. Yet for 
several years the Art Journal continued to be the only journal in 
Europe by which the Fine Arts and the arts of manufacture were 
adequately " represented." 

I make grateful record of the services during thirty-three years of 
my assistant-editor, Mr. James Dafforne. Our long and intimate 
relations were brought to a close by his death so recently as June, 
1879. We had labored together in perfect harmony. He loved his 
work. The artists, so many of whose works he criticised, found in 
him a courteous, considerate, generous, and always sympathizing, 
friend. Though for a long time in declining health, his energies 
were untiring ; his zeal to do good was as much so ; his abilities are 
proved by many publications — principally memoirs of British artists. 
He was industrious, able, and upright. I place on record this grate- 
ful memory. And surely I am bound to acknowledge the assistance 
of one who was, in the highest and holiest sense, my "helpmate" 
during fifty-six years of wedded life — my constant helper and adviser 
as regards the Art Journal, and who was ranked by public approval 
among its best contributors. From the very commencement, there 
was not a month in which she did nothing to help me, while some of 
the best of her productions — especially "Midsummer Eve" and 
" Pilgrimages to English Shrines " — appeared first in the Art Journal. 

There are two other of my aids to whom I am especially bound 
to refer Avith gratitude : both, alas ! dead. Mr. Henry Murray 
was a contributor to the second number ; and, I think, more or less, 
to every number up to the sad time of his death. To high classical 
attainments and a thorough acquaintance with several foreign lan- 
guages, Mr. Murray added knowledge of ancient and modern Art ; 
the former he gained, in a very considerable degree, by long and 
frequent visits to the Continent, where he studied the works of the 
great masters of old, while, at the same time, those of more recent 
date received due attention, respect, and honor. 

Frederick William Fairholt, who was for more than thirty 
years my close, valuable, and valued ally in the Art Journal, is surely 

* I had in type a list of one hundred renowned writers on Art who have been, 
from 1839 to 1880, contributors to the Art Journal ; but subsequently considered 
the space thus occupied might be better filled. Let it suffice to say there is not, I 
think, a single writer on Art and kindred subjects whose name would not appear in 
that list. 



MY FRIEND FAIRHOLT. 



207 



entitled to grateful remembrance in these pages. In that journal 
most of his best works first appeared ; to be subsequently issued as 
books — text-books for Art student and Art lovers. He was of Ger- 
man extraction, and the fact that his father was a tobacconist in the 
Borough may account for one of his books — the most popular of 
them all, perhaps — being a history of the tobacco-plant from the days 
when Walter Raleigh puffed its smoke from his mouth, to the alarm 
of his servant, down to the present period of thousands of brands of 
tobacco and millions of smokers.* 

It was not only that I was aided in the Art Journal by his ever- 
zealous co-operation : to him is owing much of the merit and worth 
of the more popular among the joint-productions of Mrs. Hall and 
myself — such as the " Baronial Halls," the " Pilgrimages to English 
Shrines," and the "Book of the Thames." He was our constant 
companion during our visits to at least a hundred "show-places," 
enlightening us with his knowledge and largely aiding us by his anti- 
quarian notes. For he was a genuine antiquary to the heart's core, 
who loved the old far more than the new ; and he was also a genu- 
ine Londoner, who, like Dr. Johnson, considered that earth supplied 
no scene of interest so great as that furnished by Fleet Street and 
its adjacent alleys and courts. 

I remember his town-bred instincts manifesting themselves in an 
amusing fashion when he was my guest at Addlestone. The house 
was full, and I was obliged to allot him a bedroom in the gardener's 
lodge. In the morning, when he came in to breakfast, I asked him 
how he had slept. " Very badly," he answered ; " I was kept awake 
all night by the nightingales." " Well," I said, " if you were des- 
tined to be sleepless, it was at least something to be made so by the 
sweet bird ' most musical, most melancholy.' " " In plain truth," he 
replied, " if you are to be kept awake, I don't see much difference 
between nightingales and cats ! " 

He traveled with me to Ireland ; and many of the illustrations 
in the volumes of " Ireland : its Scenery and Character," are from 
drawings by him ; especially those which picture the wild sea-coast 
of Achill and Connemara. It was " funny " to see the genuine 
Cockney mounted on one of the shaggy ponies of the wild west, 
holding on firmly by the mane, while his huge cloak was blown about 
his legs by the fierce breezes from the broad Atlantic, and to note 
his sigh of relief when he was permitted to dismount — a perilous un- 
dertaking. He was with me at Achill during one of its periodical 

* In a passage from the dedication chapter of his volume, addressed to his friend 
Mr. C. Roach Smith, he thus alludes to the days of his boyhood: "You who know 
my early history will feel no surprise at my choice of subject. Born in London, and 
never having been out of sight of St. Paul's until I reached my twenty-second year, 
the tobacco warehouse where my father worked became my playground, and my 
first remembrances are of rolling in the tobacco-leaf as country children would roll 
in a hay-field, and playing at hide-and-seek in the empty barrels." 



208 FAIR HOLTS WORK. 

famines, and there he saw some three thousand men, women, and 
children, literally starving. The man of tender heart was in tears 
— as, indeed, so was I — from the time he entered the island until he 
quitted it. Our stock of shillings was soon exhausted, but they little 
helped to keep death in its most cruel form at bay — for there was 
neither bread nor food of any kind to be purchased. The sad im- 
pression it created was never obliterated from the sensitive mind of 
the artist. 

Mr. Fairholt was in all ways a most pleasant and useful compan- 
ion. Not only was it that the details of our descriptions gained in 
accuracy and value from his presence : his conversation, of an even- 
ing, on the work of the day at once showed how brimful he was of 
old-world knowledge, and gave delightful proof that the teachings 
of an antiquary may be rendered — 

" Not harsh and rugged as dull fools suppose, 
But musical as is Apollo's lute." 

Brief as I am forced to make this summary of Fairholt's literary 
and artistic life, it may serve to indicate how very far removed he 
was, all his days, from being an idle man. His whole career was in 
truth one of diligent, useful, honorable labor ; and while constantly 
adding to his own stock of knowledge, he was as constantly em- 
ployed in communicating to others, through the medium of 
pen and pencil, what he had himself acquired. His mind was 
ardently set upon antiquarian pursuits, within a certain but by 
no means limited range ; and he followed these out vigorously 
and to good purpose, for his own reputation and for the instruc- 
tion of others. 

During several years Fairholt was the Secretary of " the Society 
of Noviomagus," being elected to that honor in 1845. George 
Godwin, F. R. S., was his predecessor, and the meetings of the Soci- 
ety gained from the presence of either estimable gentleman a zest 
and brilliancy the loss of which may well be deplored by the few 
old members who yet remain. 

In the Art Journal for December, 1880, I bade farewell to the 
public, to the artists, to my friends, and to the many helpers I had 
found during the forty-two years of my editorship. My boast was 
not that of the emperor who found Rome of brick and left it of 
marble ; but I claimed — that I found Art depressed, and left it 
prosperous ; that the promise I made at the commencement of my 
labors I had to the letter fulfilled ; that I had convinced those who 
desired to possess pictures, as sources of never-ceasing home enjoy- 
ment, how safe and wise it was to obtain works by British artists, 
and eschew those that were termed "old masters." I did that by 
conclusive evidence and continual exposures of the extensive and 



MY FAREWELL. 



209 



nefarious trade in pictures imported. I repeat, I have lived to see 
such pictures valued accordingly, and a thorough transfer of patron- 
age to modern Art. 

If, in the year 1883, I review a long past, and contrast the high 
and palmy state of British Art with what it was in 1840, and find 
the Retrospect a source of thankfulness and happiness — I trust I 
shall be pardoned if I hoped and expected — at parting — from Art 
lovers, from artists, and from Art patrons, a responsive Farewell. 



14 



RECOLLECTIONS 
OF EARLY ART-MANUFACTURE. 

It is my duty to give details of the circumstances under which, 
in the Art Journal, I brought Art into association with Art-manu- 
facture. Such association was commenced in the year 1842. Dr. 
Cooke Taylor, some time editor of the Anti-Corn-Law League, in 
one of several admirable papers he wrote for the Art Union, had 
used the expression, " Few understand the mercantile value of the 
Fine Arts." On that hint I acted. 

In 1843, in order to obtain, that I might communicate, informa- 
tion, I visited all the manufacturing cities and towns of England. 
I found that by few or none of them was any consistent and per- 
sistent effort made to obtain aid from artists or from Art. A single 
example may suffice. When at Kidderminster, in that year, I ascer- 
tained there was not one artist resident within twenty miles of the 
town. I was at Kidderminster in 1876 : there were then one hun- 
dred artists resident in the vicinity, and a sound, good, practical 
school of Art was established there. Every establishment had its 
artists' atelier and its staff of artists. It is so now in all the manu- 
facturing cities and towns of England and Scotland. At that day, 
some enlightened ceramic manufacturers had indeed striven, and 
successfully, to rival the Art produce of France ; but for the most 
part there was entire dependence for patterns, in every class and 
order of Art, on borrowings, purchases, or thefts. 

Now, British manufacturers thoroughly comprehend and esti- 
mate the value and the capabilities of Art, and honorably and suc- 
cessfully compete with the manufacturers of France and other 
nations. At that time dealing in foreign patterns was a regular 
trade that gave large gain to travelers employed to collect them. 

In 1843 I commenced to associate the Industrial Arts with the 
Fine Arts proper ; to show the commercial value of the Fine Arts, 
that " beauty is cheaper than deformity," that it is sound policy as 
well as true patriotism to resort to native artists for aid in all the 
productions of the workshop — in every branch of Art-manufacture. 
The proposal was new and startling — to illustrate the products of 



THE BENEFITS OF PUBLICITY. 2 II 

the manufacturer, as works in Literature had so long been illus- 
trated. To do it effectually the costly aid of the engraver was ab- 
solutely necessary. It was not suggested to the manufacturer to 
pay any part of the cost ; from that day to this, the expense of 
engraving Art objects has been entirely borne by the proprietors of 
the Art Journal. 

There is, perhaps, not a single manufacturer of note in these 
kingdoms who has not thus been represented in the columns of the 
Art Journal ; while of the International Exhibitions that have taken 
place in all parts of the world, fifteen have been there reported and 
illustrated — each, upon an average, by nearly a thousand engrav- 
ings or the exhibited works of manufacturers — according to each 
manufacturer the honor and advantage of wholesome and profitable 
publicity. The first was that of Paris in 1844. 

Objections to the plan were frequently urged, especially that 
such pictures would be suggestions to unscrupulous rivals. 

I did not, however, find it very difficult to convince manufact- 
urers that such fears as theirs were groundless. To copy a pattern 
from an engraving would, I showed them, be a theft as foolish as 
audacious ; and would be like stealing a hat and retaining the 
owner's name inside, or making off with a book and omitting to re- 
move from the cover the crest of the person to whom it belonged. 
An unprincipled person who desired to copy some production that 
was the property of another, could readily obtain a specimen by 
purchase ; but to imitate a design which, by the art of the engraver, 
had been made known to thousands as the property of Mr. So-and-so, 
would be a theft too glaring to be often ventured upon. From that 
time to the present day, the Art Journal has been the representa- 
tive, not only of the Fine Arts, in the severer acceptance of the term, 
but of those Arts as they enter into the labors of the manufacturer. 
Proofs of the salutary character of the influence so exercised are 
readily obtainable. 

In 1877, addresses on the subject of Art and Art-manufacture 
were delivered by Earl Granville, and Mr. E. J. Poynter, R. A., then 
Art-Director of the South Kensington Museum. The opinion of 
the two speakers by no means harmonized. Mr. Poynter spoke of 
things as he thought he found them ; Earl Granville of things as they 
were and are — with experience as well as knowledge. The former 
based his arguments on his ideas of what might be; the latter 
grounded his on familiar acquaintance, not only with the present, 
but the past. 

Mr. Poynter mourned over British Art-manufacture as being in a 
deplorable state. He considered that it had not advanced during 
the last twenty, thirty, or even forty years ; and (as I wrote in the 
Art Journal at that time) "seemed to agree with the Rev. Mark 
Pattison, Rector of Lincoln, who, speaking at Oxford, expressed 



212 ERRONEOUS VIEWS. 

his belief that Art in England had rather retrograded than ad- 
vanced." 

Earl Granville dissented in toto from such views, and gave satis- 
factory reasons for so dissenting. He denied that with increasing 
wealth there had been an increase in bad taste. He " believed ex- 
actly the reverse." So did I : and in the pages of the Art Journal 
expressed my astonishment " that educated gentlemen, with the 
means of acquiring information daily in a hundred varied ways, 
should express opinions so directly at variance with evidence and 
fact." 

I published, indeed, an article declaring my entire concurrence 
with the views of Earl Granville, and pointing out the sound reasons 
for accepting as authority a nobleman who had had the best oppor- 
tunities for studying every branch of his subject, who was a ripe 
scholar and in many ways an eloquent teacher, and conspicuous for 
the high culture that added luster to dignity and rank. Mr. Poyn- 
ter," I wrote, " is a comparatively young man, so we presume is Mr. 
Pattison, and we believe we shall be doing them no injustice in cred- 
iting them with but slight acquaintance with English Art-manufact- 
ure as it was thirty or forty years ago." 

Let those who are old enough recall to mind the deformities in 
Literature, and the abominations in Art, that children's books showed 
forty years ago, and compare them with those now issued by the So- 
ciety for Promoting Christian Knowledge, the Religious Tract So- 
ciety — those that are edited by Mr. T. B. Smithies — and, indeed, 
that are issued by nearly all our publishers ; have we in this most 
important matter been advancing backward " ? Then, again, the 
art of photography (undiscovered forty years ago) has made com- 
mon all the best pictures of all ages — pictures of which the general 
public, the masses, used to hear and read little, and knew nothing. 
Further, the electrotype process has made familiar the finest achieve- 
ments of the great masters of art in the precious metals, placing them 
upon the tables, not of club-houses only, but of hotels, and all pri- 
vate dwellings that aim at respectability. A considerable proportion 
of the vast increase of wealth in the manufacturing districts has been 
expended in Art luxuries of acknowledged excellence, by people 
who forty years ago would have thought such acquisitions absurdly 
extravagant. 

But I might fill pages with facts — flatly, and most satisfactorily, 
contradicting the artist and Art critic who have pronounced ex cathe- 
dra that we have gone backward instead of forward since these ac- 
cumulated helps to advancement have been ours — available to every 
class and order of artisans, manufacturers, and artists, not only in 
London, but in the provinces. 

And has the Art Union of London done nothing to improve 
public taste ? Have its thousands of pictures and hundreds of thou- 
sands of engravings — every one of which has been hung as a home 



PROGRESS OF ART MANUFACTURE. 



213 



adornment in some household — only kept back the tide of progress ? 
That institution has existed more than forty-five years ; has it existed 
in vain ? 

Has the Science and Art Department, for which the country 
pays — and willingly pays — a large annual sum, done nothing, or less 
than nothing, to sustain Great Britain in its rivalry with France and 
the other nations of the Continent ? 

The state of things that my tour through the English manufact- 
uring districts in 1843 — referred to a few pages back — was the 
means of bringing to light, is a sufficient answer to the question, 
when taken in connection with the condition of Art-manufacture at 
the present time. The chief localities I visited were Birmingham, 
Sheffield, Kidderminster, Stourbridge, Wolverhampton, Manchester, 
Nottingham, the Staffordshire Potteries, Coalbrookdale, etc. I 
found no artist of any kind engaged at anyone of the establishments 
in these great manufacturing towns. When any special work was 
undertaken, the temporary assistance of some artist was obtained ; 
but an Art staff attached to the works was never thought of. If a 
new design was wanted — an infrequent occurrence — a bit from one 
thing and a bit from another were put together, and a " novelty " 
was thus "got up," or, more commonly, something was imported 
from the Continent, and modified and adapted to suit the market. 
The accounts of the visits I made were illustrated by engravings, 
and the best subjects procurable were, of course, selected. Refer- 
ence to the pages of the Art Journal — prior to 185 1 — will show that, 
as regards taste and artistic execution, they were, for the most part, 
deplorably bad. 

The carpets of Kidderminster were disfigured by roses in size a 
foot square, temples, rock-work, and so forth. At the Staffordshire 
Potteries bad taste was the rule. The public preferred ugliness, and 
ugliness had to be provided for them. At Sheffield there had been 
little change for a century ; the old types were invariably followed, 
and anything like a truly artistic design was seldom thought of. At 
Manchester there was rarely an attempt to produce in printing a 
new design of British origin. Every large house had its agent in 
Paris, who regularly transmitted the designs in silk or cotton that 
were produced in France before they were sent into circulation. 
For these " bits " large prices were paid, whether the design was used 
or not, but to employ an English artist was altogether out of the 
question. 

There is now no large firm in Manchester or Kidderminster, or 
any other of the producing centers, that has not its artists' room, 
where a score (often more) of artists sit regularly at work to supply 
the artistic needs of the establishment. The crude, taste-perverting, 
ill-constructed designs of thirty or forty years back are as completely 
banished from the market as the flint, steel, and tinder-box of half 
a century ago : or the pattens on which our mothers walked through 



214 ART PROGRESS. 

muddy streets to church. The authorities at South Kensington are 
annually called upon to adjudicate upon many thousands of original 
designs, awarding prizes to the most meritorious, i. e., the most prac- 
tically useful. How many such were produced in this kingdom 
thirty years ago ? It is not uncommon at the present day for a 
manufacturer to pay sums varying from one guinea to fifty guineas 
for a single design. 

A leading position in bringing about these improvements in Art- 
manufacture I claim for the Art Journal. 

" We have strenuously endeavored," I said in that journal, as long 
ago as 1846, " to impress on the minds of our readers, that to give 
British productions mercantile value by the agency of the Fine Arts 
is a national object which requires for its attainment combined na- 
tional efforts. Every one branch of industry is interested and impli- 
cated in the artistic, as well as in the mercantile, improvement of 
all the rest. Perversity of taste remaining anywhere works out long 
results of injury ; while a beautiful invention in any form of produc- 
tion suggests conceptions of beauty for a vast variety of other pro- 
ductions." 

The following extract from an article by Dr. Cooke Taylor in the 
Art Union of 1848, describes briefly but graphically the relations I 
toiled to establish between manufacturer and artist : 

" There appears to us, then, a natural and early connection between the 
pursuits of the artist and the manufacturer. In the primary ages both were 
combined in one person ; through periods of progress they advanced concur- 
rently ; and, to insure the perfection of both, the bonds by which they are 
united, instead of being relaxed, should be drawn closer together in mutual 
alliance. The artist offers to the manufacturer the conception which is sure 
to command the homage of the public ; the manufacturer enables the artist 
to give his conception, not merely a local habitation in material reality, but 
an existence which admits of its being known, appreciated, admired, and ap- 
plauded. We have abundant evidence that the greatest artists of their day 
furnished designs for the vases and bronzes of Greece, Etruria, and South- 
ern Italy. The cartoons of Raffaelle testify that the greatest of painters did 
not disdain to become a designer for the workers of the loom and the em- 
broidery-frame. Benvenuto Cellini developed the purest conceptions of stat- 
uary with the chasing-tool ; and the revolution which our Wedgwood worked 
in the English potteries was most effectually aided by Flaxman. . . . There 
is, then, nothing derogatory to the highest Art in lending its aid to decorate 
objects of utility. The sculptor does not lower his position when he supplies 
a model for the m older in iron, brass, statuary-porcelain, or any other sub- 
stance in which casts may be taken. The painter no way derogates from 
his dignity when he furnishes beautiful patterns to the manufacturer of fur- 
niture-cottons, of muslins, of chintzes, or of paper-hangings. Artists are 
public teachers, and it is their duty, as well as their interest, to aim at giving 
the greatest possible extent and publicity to their instructions." 

It will be seen that the two truths I endeavored to impress on 
the minds of manufacturers were, that " beauty is cheaper than de- 



EARLY EXHIBITIONS. 



215 



formity," and that " publicity is more beneficial than concealment," 
as regards meritorious work. I was, as I have already stated, suc- 
cessful in showing them that only beneficial consequences could re- 
sult from engraving their designs in the Art Journal ; but I did not 
bring about this change of opinion in a day. The number of the 
Art Journal for December, 1849, found me writing as follows : 

" The attempt was at first opposed in some quarters, scorned in others, 
and deemed perilous by our best friends. We had no precedent in Europe ; 
and when we commenced to describe, and to illustrate by engravings, the 
works of manufacturers, we had little or no support, but much discourage- 
ment. The artist considered the space devoted to the Industrial Arts as so 
much useless matter, which deprived him of benefit ; and the manufacturers 
on their part were unable to comprehend and appreciate a novelty to which 
they were so entirely unaccustomed. They shrank from that publicity which 
they now eagerly covet. The artists, too, have learned that by this associ- 
ation their best interests are upheld and advanced." 

The years during which the Art Journal labored most to bring 
artist and manufacturer into closer relationship, were those of the 
infancy of exhibitions in England. 

In 1844 a great Exposition of Art Industry was held at Paris. 
Our French neighbors had been beforehand with us in appreciating 
the advantages of such "shows." In August, 1844, I published two 
supplementary numbers of the Art Union, describing the exhibition 
in question ; illustrating it by two hundred engraved examples. I 
gave a history of previous exhibitions held at Paris, the first of which 
took place in 1798, to be succeeded by similar displays at intervals 
of five years. No work of the kind had been previously attempted — 
not even in France. The remarks that introduced it thus shadowed 
forth the great display of the world's produce in 185 1 : 

" Here is a plan devised by a great nation, and executed on a great scale, 
for the purpose of advancing the industrial arts ; assuredly it is the interest of 
a nation, which is so dependent for its continued prosperity on its manufact- 
ures as Great Britain, to inquire how far the French experiment has been 
successful ; whether its results indicate an example to be imitated, or a failure 
to be avoided, and whether — should it appear worthy of imitation — the same 
means and appliances are available to render it as successful in London as it 
has been in Paris." 

In the second supplementary number to which I have alluded, 
the scheme thus outlined was enlarged upon as follows : 

" Three means suggest themselves, by which a national exposition could 
be attained in Great Britain : the task might be undertaken by the Govern- 
ment, by associated manufacturers, or by some independent body as a matter 
of speculation." 

Thus was shadowed forth the Great Exhibition that five years 
later astonished the whole world, and gave birth to advantages that 
can not be overestimated. 



2i6 THE CO VENT GARDEN BAZAAR. 

For the moment no such attempt was made. There did, indeed, 
take place in 1845 something that was really, what I described it, 
"an Exposition of the Products of British Art Industry." That was 
the Bazaar held at Covent Garden under the auspices of the Anti- 
Corn-Law League, the object being to raise a fund of ,£20,000 re- 
quired by its promoters. Nearly all the leading manufacturers of 
Great Britain were contributors ; and every town of the manufactur- 
ing districts was represented by a stall at which ladies presided. I 
was naturally quick to avail myself of so favorable an opportunity, 
both for noticing the then existing state of British Art industry, and 
for reiterating former suggestions regarding a National Exhibition. 
[The bazaar opened on the 8th of May, 1845.] The Art Union for 
June furnished proof of this assertion. Of the forty-four pages that 
constituted the number, twenty were devoted to an article headed, 
" The Mercantile Value of the Fine Arts. The Bazaar at Covent 
Garden, and Exposition of the Products of British Art Industry," in 
which the display of May, 1845, was described and criticised, illus- 
trated by a large number of engravings from works contributed by 
all the manufacturing towns of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Of 
the articles exhibited, I gave about sixty engravings representing the 
designs most strikingly characterized by artistic merit. Concerning 
the bazaar as a whole, its lessons and value, the Art Union thus 
summed up : 

" We have bestowed much pains on the illustration of the first attempt — 
though confessedly an imperfect one — to get up a National Exposition of the 
products of British Art Industry, because its very imperfections afford con- 
clusive evidence that if a National Exposition should be undertaken by the 
Government, or by any association of eminent men combined for that pur- 
pose, and having no connection with any political object, it would be certain 
of success. 

" A National Exposition in London would attract visitors from every 
quarter of the globe. The Temple-palace of British Industry would surpass 
anything the world has yet witnessed." 

That Temple-palace remained, however, nothing more than a 
vision. As I have elsewhere shown, men sanguine regarding the 
future of British Art industry considered the project incapable of 
realization. 

In 1846 was held the Exhibition of Art and Art Industry at Man- 
chester. I fully reported, and largely illustrated, in the Art Union, 
that display, publishing the number as a separate part. That was 
the first attempt in England to copy the example of France. It was 
successful — not, I believe in a monetary sense, but in stimulating 
trade, more especially that which constituted the great staple of the 
district. 

The opinion of the Art Union, as expressed regarding the Man- 
chester Exposition, was contained in the paragraph I extract : 



THE EARLIEST EFFORTS. 21/ 

" The first pure Exposition of Industrial Art, exclusively for its own sake, 
which has ever been held in England, will mark an epoch not only in the his- 
tory of Manchester, but also in the history of the empire. The example will 
not be lost ; but the honor of leading the way can never be dissevered from 
the city-town of Manchester." 

Toward the close of 1847 there were many reasons for believing 
that the time was approaching when the project of a Great Exhi- 
bition of Industrial Art might be carried out with effect and success. 
It was in the January of 1848 that I addressed my letter to Lord 
Carlisle. The Art Union for the same month and year contained an 
article headed " Proposed Exposition of British Manufactures." 
The first part of this article was written, at my suggestion and re- 
quest, by my friend Dr. Cooke Taylor ; the latter portion — that 
which had more direct reference to the plan — I myself furnished. 
From an article in which was contained the germ of the Great Exhi- 
bition of 185 1 I may be permitted to extract : 

" We want an Exposition of British Manufactures ; the efforts 
made in various directions to supply this want are at once proofs that it is 
felt, and that by private enterprise it can not be supplied. The Society 
of Arts has done something ; our own office is doing some service in in- 
creasing the knowledge of industrial art and diffusing a taste for its pro- 
duction.* 

" Yet we are not without hopes that such a person may be found ; . . . 
that he will have no difficulty in finding able and willing coadjutors ; that the 
co-operation of Government may be calculated upon (money in aid not being 
required) ; and that we shall ere long have to announce an Exposition of 
British Industrial Art . . . worthy of the British nation. 

" From Government nothing need be required but, first, its SANCTION — 
direct and emphatic ; next, the allotment of ground in one of the parks upon 
which to erect a temporary building ; and next, the award OF HONORARY 
MEDALS in gold and silver to those manufacturers who exhibit greatest enter- 
prise and ability, or both combined ; or whose productions are calculated to 
be practically useful to their country. 

" We believe a proposal for such an Exposition would be well received in 
the highest quarters ; Prince Albert is known to take a deep personal 
interest in all matters that relate to the Industrial Arts of England, 
and to cherish an earnest desire for their advancement. We can not 

* At that time, the office of the Art Union was in the Strand. In the window 
I placed a large number of original and beautiful productions of industrial art 
which I had collected in England and in various cities of the Continent. It was a 
source of some inconvenience, inasmuch as many passers-by desired to purchase the 
objects which were there only shown. Not long afterward several dealers in Art 
objects followed the example I had set them, and exhibited, in their shop-windows, 
beautiful and " tempting" examples of manufactured Art — notably Mr. Cundall, of 
New Bond Street (a tradesman in such matters to whom England owes a large debt 
that does not seem to have been recognized). I therefore abandoned my plan of 
showing such things in my office-window as no longer necessary. The idea " took," 
however, and hence arose the now almost universal practice of decorating shop- 
windows. 



2i8 THE ILLUSTRATED CATALOGUE. 

doubt his willingness to place himself at the head of a duly authorized, and 
properly arranged, committee of management." * 

In 1850 I undertook to prepare an illustrated catalogue of the 
Exhibition announced to take place in the following year. It was to 
be published monthly in the Art Journal — as an extra number, 
doubling the size of the work. 

The project was one involving many great difficulties in its 
accomplishment, although in these days — when the assistance of 
photography can everywhere be called in — it could be carried out 
with comparative ease. As I had resolved to issue the first part on 
May 1, 185 1 — the day on which the Exhibition was to open — there 
was no time to lose. The display was to be " International " ; it 
was, therefore, essential that foreign manufacturers should be repre- 
sented in a British Art Journal. To effect this, it was essential that 
they should be seen. 

Great Britain I was able to manage by correspondence. The 
London manufacturers I went to in person, and they readily gave 
me the requisite aid. I had an efficient agent in Paris, another 
in Brussels, and was personally acquainted with most of the intend- 
ing contributors there to the forthcoming English Exhibition ; hav- 
ing reported in the Art Journal the Paris Exhibition of 1847. They 
all knew me. Germany, however, was entirely new ground. In the 
autumn of 1850 I visited Berlin, Munich, Hanover, and Dresden, my 
object being to obtain drawings of works of Art industry which Ger- 
man manufacturers intended to contribute to the British Exhibition 
of 1851. 

The result was that on May 1, 185 1, I issued thirty-two pages 
of the Art Journal, containing engravings of articles then actually in 
the Exhibition, or on their way to it ; for it will be remembered that 
the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park was not completed until more than 
a month after the grand ceremony of its inauguration. I contin- 
ued to publish the same quantity of engravings on the first of each 
following month, to December inclusiye ; and there appeared, in 
these various monthly parts, illustrations of the Art-manufactures of 
nearly every country that contributed to the Exhibition. 

Not long after my announcement of the Illustrated Catalogue I 
contemplated issuing with the Art Journal, the " Executive " of the 
Exhibition advertised for a rival to it ; that is to say, they sought to 

* I find that as often as sixteen times before the year 1851, I strove to impress 
on the public mind the vital truth that a time was at hand when there might be, if 
not a certainty, a reasonable expectation that an exhibition similar to those that 
had so benefited France might be held in London, in one of the parks — with the 
good Prince Albert at its head ; and early in 1850 I handed to Mr. Cole, after- 
ward Sir Henry Cole, several letters I had received from Lord Carlisle, Sir 
George Grey, then Home Secretary, and Sir Thomas Wise, one of the Lords of 
the Treasury. 



THE ILLUSTRATED CATALOGUE. 219 

obtain a sum of money for the privilege of publishing an officially- 
recognized catalogue, and accordingly issued proposals for tenders. 
I declined to be among the applicants, and the right that I had rea- 
son to hope would have been secured to me in acknowledgment of 
my past labors was purchased by Messrs. Spicer and Clowes, for the 
sum of ^2,000.* Their Illustrated Catalogue was, however, badly 
done ; for they could bring to the work neither the experience nor 
the resources that I possessed. 

Had the sole right of issuing an Illustrated Catalogue remained 
in my hands, it is my belief that the venture I embarked upon would 
have " paid." As it was, I was confined to the receipts arising from 
the increase of price consequent on the thirty-two pages of engrav- 
ings added to the Art Journal. No part of the cost was charged to 
the manufacturer for the benefit he received from so novel and val- 
uable a form of advertisement. It was expected that the public 
would defray the cost of the undertaking, and the sale of the work 
was certainly large.f From May to December, 185 1, double num- 
bers of the Art Journal were issued, price five shillings each, and 
the public paid that year for the Art Journal a sum exceeding ^72,- 
000. Large, however, as were the receipts, the expenses were still 
larger. I was then the principal proprietor of the work ; but the 
consequence of a " loss " arising out of the publication of the Art 
Journal Illustrated Catalogue was the sale of my shares to my co- 
proprietors — men of business and calculating habits — and I became, 
from 185 1, only the paid editor of the work, but under an arrange- 
ment that secured to me a life-recompense and entire editorial control. 

There is a theme upon which — with its concomitants — I could 
say much ; but my readers would little care to read what I might 
write : it had better be abrogated altogether. 

Did space permit, and I could count on the patience of my 
readers, I might occupy many pages with details of " the World's 
Fair" — the Great Exhibition of 185 1. Perhaps the following details 
may prove of interest — and suffice : 

* It was understood that they lost £2,000 by the speculation, and the £2,000 
they had paid for the privilege was in consequence returned to them out of the sur- 
plus that remained when the doors of the Exhibition had been finally closed, and 
all expenses met. 

f The portions relating to the Exhibition were subsequently published in a sep- 
arate volume, at the price of one guinea. It contained four hundred pages, and 
more than one thousand engravings, and was preceded by five essays : 1. " On 
the Science of the Exhibition," by Professor Robert Hunt ; 2. " On the Harmony 
of Colors, as exemplified in the Exhibition," by Mrs. Merrifield ; 3. " On the 
Vegetable Kingdom, as illustrated in the Exhibition," by Professor Forbes, F. R. S. ; 
4. " On the Machinery of the Exhibition as applicable to Manufacture," by Pro- 
fessor Gordon ; and, 5. " On the Exhibition as a Lesson in Taste," by R. N. 
Wornum. The latter was a prize essay, for which the proprietors of the Art Jour- 
nal had. paid the sum of £100, in fulfillment of an offer made by them. The vol- 
ume was dedicated to his Royal Highness Prince Albert. 



220 THE EXHIBITION. 

It was in January, 1850, that Mr. Henry Cole and Mr. Francis 
Fuller made a report " to his Royal Highness Prince Albert, as to 
the opinions of leading manufacturers throughout the kingdom," to 
obtain which they had visited the manufacturing districts. The sub- 
ject was popular. Considerable sums were subscribed as a guaran- 
tee fund, contracts were entered into, and the great work was com- 
menced. 

For the proposed building two hundred and twenty-nine designs 
were submitted to the Prince, thirty-four of which designs were con- 
tributed by foreigners. The difficulty had been foreseen of erecting 
a huge structure of brick and mortar, that should be dry by the be- 
ginning of the next year ; when a lucky thought occurred to Mr. 
Joseph Paxton, the head-gardener of the Duke of Devonshire. The 
huge conservatory of glass at Chatsworth was in his " mind's eye " 
while journeying by railway from London to Derbyshire : he con- 
ceived the idea of imitating it on a gigantic scale — as an Exhibition- 
building. He traced his plan on a large sheet of blotting-paper that 
he chanced to have with him in his traveling-bag. The scheme was 
like the method of making an egg stand on end, adopted by Colum- 
bus. Once made public, every one immediately exclaimed, " How 
easy ! " and, in fact, when conceived the undertaking was as good as 
completed. 1 saw the sheet of paper before it became a plan, and 
said that it was just the thing required. The " happy thought " of 
Sir Joseph Paxton was in fact happy, not only for himself, but also 
for the Prince, the Commissioners, and above all the Executive, who 
— confronted with the impossibility of getting ready a brick-and- 
mortar structure in the time at their disposal — saw themselves on the 
threshold of an imbroglio from which they feared there would be no 
method of escape. 

It is amusing now, and so indeed it was thirty-two years ago, to 
note the many prophecies of financial failure. The Times anticipated 
a loss of .£35,000 — " a balance for the consideration of the House 
of Commons." As a matter of fact, the financial returns alto- 
gether surpassed the most sanguine expectations ; but the greatest 
results of the Exhibition were not those that could be summed 
up in pounds, shillings, and pence. It led the way to other In- 
ternational Exhibitions, not only in Europe, but in the United 
States, and it gave a powerful impetus to British Art-manufac- 
ture. Had there been a monetary loss, instead of a gain as large 
as unexpected, the country would still have profited greatly by the 
undertaking. 

I should occupy space that may be better filled if I entered into 
details concerning the exhibitions that succeeded the Great Exhibi- 
tion of 185 1. It is needless to say that each and all were represented 
by engravings in the Art Journal, where I do not think I am exag- 
gerating if I say from 40,000 to 50,000 were published between the 



ART PROGRESS. 221 

earliest illustrated catalogue and the latest, the Paris Exhibition of 
1878. 

My remarks on Art, as considered in its relations to manufactures, 
are drawing to a close. I have tried to show what my efforts were in 
the past, and how, during many years, I labored to awaken artists 
and manufacturers to a sense of their mutual interests, and to secure 
for Great Britain exhibitions of Art industry that might truly be 
termed national, and worthy of the foremost manufacturing nation in 
the world. Speaking in the name of the Art Journal, I thus ex- 
pressed in December, 187 1, my sentiments regarding the Great Exhi- 
bition of 185 1 ; and the years that preceded and followed that great 
and successful attempt to carry out the theories I had so long been 
advocating : 

" The efforts made by us, which undoubtedly led to the introduction of 
such exhibitions into England in 1851, we have seen crowned with a success 
that few were sanguine enough to anticipate twenty years ago. British ad- 
vance in Art-manufacture is evident in every branch of it. We are justified 
in believing that the thousands of models engraved in this journal from the 
best designs of the best manufacturers of the world, have largely influenced 
the manufacturers and artisans of these kingdoms ; and that the examples 
thus supplied have had their natural effect in stimulating effort and promot- 
ing excellence." 

Here my remarks must close. In spite of Messrs. Poynter, Patti- 
son, and other pessimists of their school, I maintain that during the 
last forty years British Art has not retrograded, but advanced ; that 
throughout our manufacturing districts good taste is now the rule 
where it was formerly the exception ; and that, in every department 
of British Art industry, " Progress " has for nearly half a century been 
the watchword. 

A large share in accomplishing this work I claim for the Art 
Journal. 

There is no question that the firm resolution of his Royal High- 
ness Prince Albert made the Exhibition what it became : he gave to 
it dignity and importance, augmented its popularity, and made it a 
thorough success. But the conviction that England ought to do 
something of the kind became so general, that an Exhibition of Art 
and Art Industry on a grand scale there certainly would have been 
under any circumstances. It is to the far-seeing mind of the Prince 
that we owe its international character, and that constituted its prin- 
cipal feature ; but it was a daring act thus to challenge the whole 
world : the nations and people among which and whom Art had 
grown into vigor, while among us it was yet comparatively in its in- 
fancy. 

Elsewhere I have shown the state of " British Art Industry " in 
1840, or thereabout. In 1850 that state was not much better. At 



222 THE PRINCE ALBERT. 

best it seemed a visionary scheme to invite to witness the compe- 
tition — Great Britain, against Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. 
The eventual result has a prominent place in the history of the cent- 
ury ; the second half of it, that is to say, which commenced with 
the year 1851. 

The good Prince lived to see arise out of that event much of the 
good he anticipated from it ; but those who shared with him the 
glory and the gain, many of whom, who yet live to count their tri- 
umphs, will bear witness that the Great International Exhibition of 
1 85 1 — the forerunner of many competitors — was the foundation of 
so much advancement in every branch of Art-manufacture that the 
benefits thence derived are incalculable. From the day it opened, 
improvements were commenced that eventually became common. 
Every manufacturer, nay, every artisan, became a thoughtful, in- 
quiring, and considerate student : he learned to know his deficien- 
cies ; to see how others had removed theirs ; at every turn he 
obtained a lesson taught by comparison, and acquired more in- 
formation in an hour than books would have given him in a 

y ear - . . 

If the good Prince can, in what is termed his grave," be con- 
scious of the enormous good done to his country — shared, moreover, 
by all countries — he will be largely rewarded for his anxious labor 
to render the Exhibition of 1851 a great and grand success. 

There were collateral advantages : it brought many thousands 
of foreign citizens as visitors to England — removing prejudices, aid- 
ing to promote peace — for, although the almost universal expectation 
that Peace would be the dictator, whose mandates of good-will to 
earth would be in future issued from the ateliers, was grievously an- 
nulled by the frightful wars subsequently waged in Europe, Asia, 
and America, there came universal conviction that the policy of 
Concord had its most powerful upholder in the Exhibition, at which, 
in 1 85 1, a lamp was lit that has enlightened the whole world, and all 
humanity for all time. 

Surely, to Prince Albert mainly belongs the glory of giving to 
Great Britain the advantages that have arisen to the Arts and to 
Art-manufactures since the memorable 1st of May, 185 1, when the 
great Exhibition was opened in Hyde Park, on the space now 
marked by the gorgeous Memorial to his Royal Highness. 

If my efforts have been. great, my rewards have been many — 
such as to make my Retrospect very pleasant and very happy. 

This chapter has necessarily contained much — perhaps too much 
— matter that has mainly reference to myself. There is one other, 
although it extends to some length, that, I hope, no one of my 
readers would call upon me to omit. Among ' recognitions " of 
which I am greatly and rightly proud, in 1867, on my birthday (the 
9th of May), a very beautiful dessert service (the manufacture of 



FROM BIRMINGHAM. 



223 



Messrs. Elkington, and perhaps one of the most perfect examples of 
their art) was presented to me by the Mayor of Birmingham (George 
Dixon, Esq.), and a large number of the magnates of that renowned 
town of Art-manufacture. An address to the editor of the Art 
Journal was thus worded : 

" We offer for your acceptance the gift now before you, not as a reward 
for your labors, or as an adequate acknowledgment of them, but as a sincere 
though modest testimony of the sense we entertain of your services in the 
advocacy and development of Industrial Art. 

" Thirty years ago, in the foundation of the Art Journal, you enunciated 
the principle that, next to the excellence of workmanship, the success of all 
manufactures susceptible of ornament must depend upon the full employ- 
ment of the advantages and resources of Art. You taught the doctrine that 
usefulness gains a double strength when united with beauty. You stimulated 
the manufacturers of England to compete with their Continental rivals, not 
only in the quality but in the taste of their productions. To this teaching 
you have ever since been constant ; and you have now, after thirty years of 
labor, the proud satisfaction of witnessing the general adoption and the 
unvarying success of those counsels which were at first regarded with indif- 
ference or with distrust. 

" While recalling those efforts we remember also that to you we owe in a 
great measure the succession of Industrial Exhibitions, which have conferred 
so many and enduring benefits upon the manufacturers of this country. At 
a very early period you pointed out the value of these periodical competitions, 
and showed that they served a purpose far wider and higher than the grati- 
fication of individual or national vanity. Twenty-three years ago you indicated, 
both by pen and pencil, the lessons which the Paris Exhibition of 1844 con- 
veyed to the manufacturers of Great Britain. In 1849 Y ou heralded and re- 
corded the success of the Birmingham Exhibition — the first really Industrial 
Exhibition held in England. You earnestly advocated the International Ex- 
hibition of 185T ; and the Illustrated Catalogue of that collection — due solely 
to your exertions — will ever remain a monument of your persevering industry 
and taste. You performed similar services in connection with the Dublin 
Exhibition of 1853, the Paris Exhibition of 1855, and the Second Great Inter- 
national Exhibition of 1862; and now, with unabated ardor, you propose to 
crown these labors by illustrating and recording the contents of the Paris 
Exhibition of 1867. 

" We have recounted these labors as landmarks, so to speak, of your ex- 
ertions in the cause to which your life has been devoted, and of which we, 
in common with others, have shared the benefit. We might speak of other 
labors not less important, though not strictly within our purpose, of your serv- 
ices to the higher arts of design, of your successful efforts to cultivate the 
taste of the English public, of your independence in exposing fraud and trick- 
ery in the Picture Market, and of your contributions to literature, both sin- 
gly and in conjunction with one whose name will always be affectionately 
linked with your own. 

" That you may long be spared to continue these services, and to reap 
from them the advantages and the pleasures you deserve and merit, is the 
earnest desire of the contributors to this slight acknowledgment of your 
prolonged, persevering, and unceasing labors." 

From my reply to this address, I need extract only a single para- 
graph : 



224 FROM BIRMINGHAM. 

" I have been an editor only. The knowledge I communicated was the 
knowledge that others had acquired ; the taste I disseminated was the taste 
that others inculcated and taught." 

That gift, and this communication, I class among the highest 
and best rewards I have received during my long life of labor. Al- 
though the greatest, it was not the only one. From manufacturers 
generally throughout the kingdom, and not of this kingdom alone, 
I have obtained acknowledgments surpassing even those my gra- 
cious sovereign could have conferred — such as those accorded to so 
many of my competitors in the race for distinction and glory. 



RECOLLECTIONS 
OF PARIS IN 1831 : OF GERMANY IN 1850. 

In February, 1831, I visited Paris for the first time. I had not 
long been editor of the New Monthly Magazine, and was unprepared 
for the honors I found awaiting me. In France, at all times, the 
conductor of a public journal is assumed to be " a great man " ! I 
had taken but few letters of introduction ; and when I found the 
cards of several leading politicians, authors, and artists left at the 
hotel where we lodged, in the Rue Vivienne — among others, one 
from the then Prime Minister, Casimir Perier, placing at our dis- 
posal his box at the Opera — I thought there must be some singular 
mistake, and could not decide what to do, until the enlightenment 
of a little information relieved me of my perplexity. The New 
Monthly was recognized as a leading periodical work in England, 
which had recently been under the editorship of one of the most 
famous of English poets, and I was supposed to be a worthy success- 
or, to whom respect approaching reverence ought to be accorded. 
[I imagine the editor of a French magazine arriving in London, and 
finding Earl Grey and the Marquis of Lansdowne among the earliest 
of his callers ! ] I certainly had not formed a high estimate of my 
position, and had hesitation in accepting the courtesies so unexpect- 
edly thrust upon me. 

I do not mean to occupy much space with details as to the vari- 
ous persons and societies thus opened up to us during our residence 
of a few weeks in the French capital ; but there are some celebrities 
of the period concerning whom observations may be desirable. 

Paris was at that time but slowly recovering from the effects of 
the " three glorious days " — the last days of the month of July, 1830. 
Many of the houses retained marks of dilapidation : cannon-balls, in 
a few instances, remained imbedded in the brick-work ; traces of the 
barricades were easily found ; and the boulevards were denuded of 
trees. It was high-day and holiday yet, however, with the majority 
of the population, who had, not many months previously, crowned 
their Citizen-King. The blood that was shed had been removed 
from the pavements of the streets, but the civil war of three days had 

15 



226 LAFA YETTE. 

left many houses desolate, and had decimated the heroic Swiss, 
who, true to their bond, defended the monarchy to the last. The 
very children fought, and fought desperately ; instances are on rec- 
ord where boys so young that they could barely reach the boot of 
the mounted cuirassier, stole under the belly of the horse, stabbed 
him with a snatched-up cutlass, and perished with him as he fell. 
The barricades had been garrisoned by more women than men, and 
the slaughter among them was terrific. 

We had a pleasant and very useful acquaintance in Mr. Conway, 
the correspondent of the Times. He described to me an occurrence 
which, I believe, he witnessed. Early in the struggle a woman was 
shot : a gigantic chiffonier, who saw her fall, seized the still bleeding 
body, raised it in his arms above his head, and bore it thus, with sol- 
emn step, along the boulevard, exclaiming in a deep, hollow tone, 
" Vengeance ! vengeance ! " which he repeated again and again 
while blood was dripping from the senseless form. The effect on the 
mob was like that of an electric shock : the throng of discouraged 
combatants rallied ; and that simple yet terrible incident largely 
aided to determine the issue of the three glorious days." 

Our first, and perhaps the most fertile of our visits, was paid to 
General Lafayette. 

He was born in 1757, and was a very young man when, in 1777, he 
brought his enthusiasm — he had little else to bring — to the aid of 
that Independence which the American colonists so bravely fought 
for and so gloriously achieved. In 1830 he was not so very old, but 
he looked older than his seventy-three years — was feeble, and " lacked 
moisture." 

What a space both of years and events separated him from his 
memorable career in 1789, when the Reign of Terror commenced in 
France ! 

Famous when so many of his compeers were infamous, he did 
his best, at no small personal peril, to stanch the blood-flow during 
that terrific time of misery and guilt. 

His was not an uneventful life, between that period and the " three 
days " of July, 1830. Much of it, however, had been passed in com- 
parative quiet : the Empire had none of his service, and as little had 
the predoomed house of Bourbon after the Restoration in 181 6. 

As a consequence of the " three days," the Duke of Orleans was 
made king ; and for a time, but for a time only, Lafayette was " vice- 
roy over him." He had resolutely refused to become the president 
of a republic ; and when it was proposed to him to wear a crown, 
had answered, quoting a sentence of Marshal Saxe, that " it would 
sit as well upon him as a ring upon a cat's paw." Lafayette had the 
sovereignty of the National Guards, and even that was in a measure 
forced upon him. He did not retain that shadow of power long : so 
early as 183 1 he had " retired into private life " ; and in 1834 he died. 



FENIMORE COOPER. 



227 



Consistent as well as upright, he resisted all the blandishments so 
abundantly lavished upon him, and continued to the last a citizen 
without a force — a general who, if he had an army, distrusted rather 
than commanded it. Unselfish, generous, just, he was a man of 
whom not only France may be proud, but in whom humanity may 
glory. 

He never could have been a man of large intelligence : his was a 
poor head — deficient, as are the heads of nearly all Frenchmen, in 
the organ of benevolence — the foreheads almost invariably reced- 
ing ; there was little back, not much of the animal, and the organ of 
destructiveness was absent : it was, in short, not the head of a man 
predestined to be a leader in two bloody revolutions. I am sure he 
would have been among the last to have willfully heaped upon his 
soul — as so many of his comrades did — the curses of slaughtered 
enemies or friends slain as stepping-stones for ambition. Yet he 
lived and strove among the ferocious wolves of the first Revolution. 
Probably it was owing to him that the second Revolution was, by 
comparison, bloodless ; at least, that there was no indiscriminate 
massacre in the name of liberty. Assuredly, he was a man of tender 
nature — one who would far rather have signed a reprieve than a 
death-warrant. His features were finely outlined — the nose large, 
the lips easily compressed ; but sternness was not his characteristic : 
he was courteously amiable, and, though a republican, had little 
pride. It was not difficult to think of him as attractive in youth, 
probably handsome, and that personally he must have been very 
acceptable to the sons and daughters of Young America, for whose 
freedom he fought — and bled also, for he was wounded in his first 
fight* 

He spoke English well, and did me the honor to converse with 
me : the topic could not have been of importance, for I can not re- 
call the conversation. 

Of the group around there was one who left an impression on 
my memory — Fenimore Cooper. He " stalked " about the salon — a 
tall, stalwart man, with the unmistakable air of self-confidence I have 
noticed in many Americans ; as if it were a prime thought that inde- 
pendence was to be maintained by a seeming indifference to the 
opinions of on-lookers — a sensation that vanishes, however, when the 
demeanor that has given rise to it is found but the rough shell of a 
sweet kernel ; for Americans are among the most socially generous 
of humankind. I had other and better opportunities of seeing Feni- 
more Cooper afterward : but in that salon, jostled by petits maitres, 
he was out of place— as much so as an Indian cross-bow would have 

* A writer in the New Monthly, in 1834, describes him : " I thought him the 
most finished gentleman I had ever seen. . . . Every word he spoke, in his deep, 
almost guttural but still melodious voice, was kind or forcible. His motions and 
actions were perfectly graceful. In his early days he must have been — taking face 
and figure and everything else into consideration — a very fine-looking animal." 



228 AMELIA OPIE. 

been among a collection of Minie rifles. Proctor, in 1828, wrote of 
him : " He has a dogged, discontented look, and seems ready to af- 
front or be affronted. His eye is rather deep-set, dull, and with 
little motion." He describes Cooper as rude even to coarseness in 
English society. That is not my experience of the author of " The 
Spy " — the originator of the class of sea-fictions — to whom the read- 
ing world owes a large debt. He was certainly the opposite of 
" genial," and seemed to think it good taste and sound judgment to 
be condescending to his equals. 

On one or two evenings that I passed at the General's he gave us 
a cordial invitation to his country-house (we always regretted we 
could not accept it), where, I have been told, he was positively 
" delicious." 

On the evening I am describing a singular and impressive cere- 
mony took place. A revolution had broken out in Poland, and a 
number of young Poles of family and position were assembled at the 
General's reception. They had come to bid him farewell, and to 
ask his blessing. They advanced one by one, and as each passed 
he received a kiss from the venerable hero, who placed a hand upon 
his head, and gave the blessing asked for. They were remarkably 
fine and handsome men, most of them in early youth. Within a month 
after the memorable ceremony every one of that large number was 
dead.* 

I recall another incident in that salon. We suddenly heard a 
whisper, of which the words Sceur de charity were distinct, and saw 
walking up the room with stately step, leaning on the arm of a tall 
Irishman — who had made himself conspicuous by a large shirt-front 
and absence of waistcoat — a lady, stout and short, clad in a dress 
which, though very strange in that assembly, was familiar to us, for 
it was the simple habit of a Quakeress — bonnet and all. To our 
astonishment, we recognized Amelia Opie. Her cavalier was O'Gor- 
man Mahon, who looked what he really was — a wild Irishman. A 
bird-of-paradise suddenly descending to pick up crumbs in an Eng- 
lish farmyard could scarcely have created more astonishment among 
Dame Partlet's brood than did this pea-hen among the superbly 
dressed and jeweled dames of the Parisian salon. The good Gen- 
eral seemed to know her well, and rose and greeted her with the 
grace of the days he had so largely helped to spoil — when a French 
gentleman was understood to be the gentleman par excellence. Dear 
Mrs. Opie : she seemed utterly indifferent to the murmurs of inquiry 
and surprise that would have confounded any one less self-possessed, 
and turned to us with that sweet naivete' which was at all periods of 
her life her especial charm. She was more at home the next even- 

* Before their departure, these young Poles sang a few stanzas of what must 
have been a war-song, in which several joined, and which drew tears from tender 
hearts and bright eyes. We little thought it was their funeral hymn. 



DAVID D' ANGERS. 22Q 

ing when we met her at the Baron Cuvier's, where we chatted over 
the somewhat ludicrous incident of the preceding night. 

And what a memory is that I have to give of the Baron Cuvier ! 
His brain (weighed after his death) was said to be the largest ever 
known to be allotted to any human being. Certainly his head was 
the " biggest " I have ever seen. It was the skull that was so, for 
his features were not above the ordinary size, while his form was 
rather under the usual height ; it was thick and clumsy, and he 
seemed to move about as if motion were an inconvenience. His 
wife was a charming woman, and his step-daughter a lady most 
gentle, genial, and lovable. On the two evenings we passed at his 
modest dwelling in the Jardin des Plantes, we met many of the 
savants of France, but they sank into insignificance beside the ven- 
erable man who had so long been one of the lights of the world. 
He died the year following — in 1832. Cuvier was, as regards the 
inner and the outer man, more German than French, and perhaps 
more Swiss than either. His father was a Swiss officer, and he was 
born at Montbeliard, one of the towns of the duchy of Wurtemberg. 

I first made at Cuvier's the acquaintance of the sculptor " David," 
a namesake of, but not related to, the painter ; although himself a 
republican of the deepest dye, yet an ardent lover of England and 
of English institutions. To distinguish him from his branded prede- 
cessor, he was known as " David d'Angers," Angers being the place 
of his youthhood, though not of his nativity — in 1789. 

Early in this century he made his way to Paris, and rapidly rose 
to fame — taking high rank among artists, but refusing all profes- 
sional honors because of his extreme and never-hidden republican 
principles. For these opinions he was exiled in 185 1, during the 
presidency of the third Napoleon ; but, permitted to return to 
France, he died at Paris in 1856. 

I seldom visited Paris without spending an hour in the atelier of 
the fierce little man. He would have followed, had he dared, the 
footsteps of his namesake. I like best to remember him by his 
medallions — bas-reliefs of distinguished women and men, many 
of whom were English ; and I have never ceased to regret that I 
did not yield to his frequent request that I and also Mrs. Hall 
should sit to him, that we might be included in the very long list of 
" celebrities." 

I met there, from time to time, some of the most eminent men of 
France ; among them, I recall the renowned chansonnier, Beranger, 
whose last appearance in public was at the funeral of David. He 
was an aged man and very bald when I saw him, stooped much, and 
seemed enfeebled by the weight of years. Evidently he was a kindly 
and gentle man, who would not have followed where the sculptor 
would have led. His expression was calm, his manner gracious. 



230 



DAVID D' ANGERS. 



Obviously, he was of a simple, generous, and sympathetic nature ; 
and if he loved Liberty, it was as the true poet ought to love her — 
as the inspiration and incitement to universal good ! He could 
speak no English, and I but little French — insufficient for conversa- 
tion ; my scrutiny was therefore confined to looks, and he did not 
appear at all offended at my prolonged stare. I could read his 
poems, however, and had read many of them, and — in the best way 
I was able — thanked him for the delight he had given me. No doubt 
his chansons forwarded the Revolution of 1830, which placed Louis 
Philippe on the throne of France : to perpetuate monarchy, how- 
ever, was not the purpose of the writer, who was an avowed repub- 
lican. Many of his songs for freedom are among the most popular 
compositions of any age, while his touching and pathetic love-ditties 
have cheered the hearts of the young, and gladdened those of the 
old, for the better part of a century. 

But another visitor, of a far opposite character, I met at David's 
— a man of whom I should have taken more note if I had known 
who and what he was ; but I did not learn so much until after he 
had gone, when the sculptor whispered to me he was one of the 
regicides who at the trial of Louis XVI had voted " Death." I 
regret that I forget his name. He was an aged man, with a withered 
countenance, down-looking, and low-hearted, probably (I hope it 
was so) the outcome of remorse. Forty years had passed since his 
evil act. He had seen the issue of another struggle between the 
masses and arbitrary power forty years after the first ; had seen 
bloody streams again running along the gutters of Paris, and had 
learned how little is added by revolution to the happiness of hu- 
mankind and the natural Rights of Man. He did not, I imagine, 
live to see that of 1848, followed by the coup d'etat of 185 1, which 
terminated a war in a day, though he did witness that of the " three 
glorious days," and had acted his loathsome part in that which 
marked with infamy forever the years of massacre that followed 
1789. 

I wrote this passage concerning David in the Art Union, 1845 : 
" Eighteen years of age, nine francs in his pocket, David entered 
Paris. Is there a pen could tell the sufferings in body and spirit of 
the young enthusiast when, his little sum expended, he is glad to 
chip out ornaments on the Louvre at tenpence a day to keep the life- 
lamp barely burning ? • With a will unwearied, unconquered by daily 
difficulties and toil, he wrought on his studies at night in his narrow 
chamber, wakening himself up sometimes with a page of Atala or 
Homer, which were all his library, and sleeping for a few hours on 
the softest board ; it was all his bed. Faith and Hope kept him up, 
and the angel tenderness of his mother, that stretched over all dis- 
tance to hover round and bless her struggling son." 



THE EXHIBITION, 1867. 23 1 

I have often been in Paris since 1831, but there is little connected 
with my several visits that I care to recall.* The several Exhibitions 
that have been held there it was my business to describe and illus- 
trate by engravings. These have been prominent features in the 
volumes of the Art Journal. When, in 1867, the last Exhibition of 
the Imperial regime was in progress, the Emperor was in the zenith 
of his glory. He gave me a gracious audience ; and I recall him as 
I had seen him often, when a lonely and neglected man, he trod the 
streets of London, none foreseeing the greatness of his " hereafter " 
— none excepting himself. He had faith in his star, and knew it was 
his destiny to rule over the country of his birth. At the Evenings 
of Lady Blessington, in Seamore Place and at Gore Lodge, he was a 
frequent guest ; but the " Prince Napoleon " usually took a side 
seat, spoke to few, was morose rather than social, and seemed ab- 
sorbed in his own, and not cheerful, thoughts. He would exchange 
a few words with any one who approached him, but to those who 
were not initiated, or not of his " order," he seemed to think the less 
said the better. He saw the finger that beckoned him on, but not 
the hand that warned him back ; and if he dreamed of an Empire 
over which he was to rule, he little recked of the dwelling at Chisel- 
hurst that was to be his last home, and of the small village church 
that was destined to become his sepulchre — an exile with little sym- 
pathy and no applause ! 

Lady Blessington and Count d'Orsay were his friend-allies when 
those who upheld him were in number very limited indeed. It is 
said he treated them ungratefully ; perhaps he did ; but ingratitude 
was not, as a rule, one of his crimes. It was reported that Lady 
Blessington, when a mournful destiny compelled her to become an 

* After the reception in 1853, and the grand banquet at the H6tel-de-Ville, the 
President gave a dejeAner at St. Cloud. There was a very large number of repre- 
sentatives of all nations present. As the afternoon drew on, people began to get 
hungry, then very hungry ; but to get anything in the shape of refreshment was im- 
possible. At length the doors of the orangery were thrown open, and in rushed a 
ravenous crowd. The tables were speedily lined three deep ; the inner line con- 
sisting chiefly of French officers, who, with the usual absence of politeness in France 
— if politeness be as Lord Shaftesbury defines it, " Benevolence in trifles " — effect- 
ually kept away all strangers from the chances of refreshment. Seeing this, and 
feeling very wroth at such inhospitable dealing, I advanced to one of the tables, 
behind which there were huge masses of "eatables and drinkables" of all kinds. I 
cried out in a loud voice, " Make way for the Lord Mayor ! " way was made in- 
stantly. I then called out, " Are there any English who want refreshment ? " A 
score of replies obtained a score of supplies. Dish after dish I handed over the 
heads of an environing crowd of French officers and their ladies, followed by bottle 
after bottle of champagne, answering all English applicants until there were no 
more to answer. I then bowed, and retired to seek out the Lord Mayor, and ex- 
plain what I had done. The great man of the day thanked me ; many of his con- 
stituents thus, by my help, received the refreshment they grievously needed. Some- 
what apprehensive that a wrong construction might be put on my act, I myself 
took neither " bite nor sup " in that place that day, but dined at my own cost at a 
restaurant outside the garden walls. 



232 THE PRINCE-PRESIDENT. 

exile in Paris, as the Prince had been in London, insisted on being 
an invited guest at the private as well as the public parties of the 
"President of the Republic," the lady of the British embassador in- 
timated that on such occasions she should be absent. Lady Bles- 
sington was indignant at being left out in the cold, and the old friend- 
ship terminated.* She herself, poor lady, died in 1849, and Count 
d'Orsay in 1852, before their powerful friend exchanged the title of 
President for that of Emperor. They did not live to witness his 
coronation. 

What would have been their feelings had they beheld him, when, 
after fifteen years of rule over France, his still young and beautiful 
wife by his side, and near her the heir-apparent of his power — Napo- 
leon III closed in 1867 the Paris Exposition ? 

That august ceremony took place in the grand and spacious hall 
of the Palais de lTndustrie in the Champs-Elysees. There were 
present, it was said, between twenty and twenty-five thousand per- 
sons. The Emperor expressed, in a clear, strong, " metallic " voice, 
audible throughout the large building, his "belief in the great prin- 
ciples of morality and justice, which, in satisfying all legitimate as- 
pirations, can alone consolidate thrones, exalt nations, and ennoble 
humanity ! " 

The voices of twelve hundred singers, three hundred of whom 
were ladies clad in white with blue sashes (bleu de France) across 
the bosom, chanted hymns of peace, and Rossini presided at the 
organ ! Every nation of the world contributed to swell the throng. 
France was represented by its noblest and its best. It was a day of 
glory for the Second Empire — its greatest and its last.f 

Yes ; that memorable day of October, 1867, when the Exhibition 
prizes were distributed among the merchants and manufacturers who 
had gathered from all nations to win them, was indeed a glorious 
sight — by far the most glorious of its kind ever seen. At no hour of 
the Emperor's eventful life was his power so firmly rooted. The 
Exhibition had been a " great success " ; war neither loomed near 
at hand nor in the distance ; the ruler seemed constitutionally vig- 
orous, the representatives of the people suppressed, if they felt, dis- 
content ; the prospect of founding a dynasty and transferring a 

* I have heard that after Louis Napoleon had given Lady Blessington the " cut 
dead," they chanced to meet, each in a carriage, coming from opposite direc- 
tions, in a narrow street of Paris. The President could not pass the lady by with 
a mere bow ; so, after exchanging a word or two on commonplace topics, he said, 
"Do you make a long stay in Paris?" "No," said my lady ; " do you?" The 
point of the repartee is, of course, to be found in the fact that the position of the 
President was, at that moment, precarious. 

f The Sultan, who conducted the Empress in the courtly promenades of crowned 
heads and the nobility of nations, had even a worse fate than that of his host. Be- 
fore many years were past, the French potentate had died in exile ; the Turkish by 
his own hand. 



PAUL DELAROCHE. 



233 



throne to his descendants seemed as certain as that the day would 
have an end. Triumphs of the future may have floated before his 
mental vision — such triumphs as Solferino and Magenta had been in 
the past — but no awful portent of a falling empire was there. He 
did not see the poor inn at Sedan ! 

Did he revert in fancy to those memorable summer and autumn 
days of 1867, when pacing his denuded drawing-room at Chisel- 
hurst ? 

I pass to a pleasanter theme. Few artists are better known in 
England than Paul Delaroche.* Several of the themes of his pict- 
ures are selected from English history, yet he never was in England ; 
indeed, I do not think he was ever out of France. He was essen- 
tially a Frenchman, at least according to English ideas of French- 
men : his form rather graceful, small, and active ; his features hand- 
some, but not expressing benevolence, and somewhat fierce. It was 
not difficult to imagine that his passions were not always under his 
control. His eyes were remarkably bright, black, and piercing, with 
much of the fire that indicates a restless brain. In short, you knew 
at once, when you saw him, that you saw a man of genius. My visits 
were paid to him in his atelier, where he was " at home," and where 
two or three of his pupils were generally at work with him. He had 
established a " school," where he taught the young men who were to 
be his successors. I have understood, however, that the privilege in- 
ferred little more than permission to paint there, and that positive 
instructions from the artist were not to be expected. Certainly, pu- 
pils must have profited greatly, for they saw how and with what ma- 
terials he worked, and had before them the great example whose fol- 
lowers they were. 

On my first visit to him, after some time passed in conversation, 
he was so good as to say he would like to make a drawing of me and 
"present it to madame." I was, of course, gratified, and expressed 
my thanks ; but I left Paris without giving him the sitting. I ought 

* " For our own part, we regard our personal knowledge of Delaroche, limited 
though it has necessarily been to a few visits, and those of brief duration — as an 
honor and privilege second to none of which we can boast during a long inter- 
course or intimacy with the great men of our time. We never encountered one 
who so completely realized our notions of high genius : his eloquent countenance, 
so full of rapid thought and expression, his exceeding and somewhat restless energy 
of manner, conveyed to our minds the only just idea we ever received of what we 
understand, or desire to understand, by the term Soul — as characteristic of a nature 
far superior to the great mass of humankind. The feeling of respect, not unmin- 
gled with affection, with which we regard the great painter of France, is enhanced 
by the knowledge that his high position is sustained not alone by that intellectual 
power which commands reverence from all, but by the continual exercise of the 
more ' private' and personal virtues ' — the perpetual manifestation of a generosity 
truly catholic, and the almost daily proof supplied by his life that true greatness 
may exist without a particle of selfishness, vanity, or envy." — S. C. H., Art Union, 
1846. 



234 



ARY SCHEFFER. 



to have considered the request as imperative as a royal invitation 
that is a command. He wrote to me at London, reminding me that 
I had not kept my word, and, as a matter of course, the year follow- 
ing I presented myself at his atelier, having previously made an ap- 
pointment. When I entered and removed my hat, I saw he was ready, 
and I said, " Now, how will you pose me ? " He replied, " Exactly 
as you are," and proceeded at once with the work. Although it is 
but a pencil-drawing, it is a production of marvelous power. He 
seemed resolved that it should satisfy my English artist friends. I 
sat to him thrice, and each sitting occupied about three hours. It 
has satisfied English artists ; as a likeness it is good, and as a picture 
perfect, although on a small scale and but the production of a lead- 
pencil.* I believe it is the only portrait of an Englishman he ever 
drew or painted. If report is to be credited, he did not love the 
country. At the time of which I write — 1847 — I think he was in the 
prime of life and the zenith of his fame. He died in 1856, and did 
not reach old age, having been born in 1797. He occupies, to my 
thinking, the foremost place among the painters of France. If es- 
sentially French in style, as I believe his mind was in education, he 
had wonderful power of imagination, conception, and all the higher 
qualities demanded by Art, while his finish was careful, elaborate, 
and refined ; the " slap-dash," then becoming fashionable — notably 
in the works of Delacroix — he cordially detested. 

Ary Scheffer. — The very opposite of Delaroche was his com- 
patriot, Ary Scheffer. In all ways, he was a contrast to him : some- 
what heavy of aspect and also of form, with a manner by no means 
lively : his expression grave, movements sedate, and features cer- 
tainly not handsome. Yet he had a graciousness, if not a grace, of 
demeanor, that insensibly won its way, and perhaps it was easier to 
give to him respect and affection than it would have been to have 
given them to Paul Delaroche. 

He was but two years older than his "rival," and died in 1858, 
two years after him. He is classed as a French artist, but he is 
French in nothing ; if born in France he was of German parentage, 

* I may here mention that although I have known artists all my life, and have 
been very frequently honored by requests to sit for a portrait, that to which I here 
refer is the only one that exists of me. I have not sat to any other painter — at all 
events, not sufficiently often to have one finished. 

The drawing by M. Delaroche, and that of Mrs. S. C. Hall by Malise, R. A., 
are engraved (and are published with this work) by Lumb Stocks, R. A. I may 
mention that, in 1827, I saw a young man, then articled to the eminent engraver, 
Charles Rolls, working at his desk. After watching his progress, I said : " Young 
man, you promise to rise in your profession. When you are out of your time, come 
to me and I will give you a plate to do." He did call upon me, and'I did give him 
a plate — his first plate. The youth was Mr. Lumb Stocks, now a member of the 
Royal Academy. Very recently I was fortunate in finding a proof of it, which I 
presented to the artist. 



THE KING, LOUIS PHILIPPE. 235 

and inherited from German ancestors not only the reformed faith, 
but the slow yet full brain, the constitutional ' deliberateness," the 
ponderous head and form, and the persevering industry — rather than 
sudden and impulsive energy — that mark the Teutonic race. 

The most interesting morning I spent with him was in his atelier, 
when, with a great deal of mournful pride, he showed me a retired 
closet-room, not often entered by visitors, in which were collected 
a series of clay sketches, bequeathed to him by his pupil, the Prin- 
cess Marie of France, the deceased daughter of Louis Philippe, 
whose statue of Joan of Arc obtained renown over half the world. 
The great artist literally wept while giving me their history : but it 
was easy to see that his heart was tender as that of a loving child. 
His pictures carry conviction of that : and it is not difficult of belief 
that in his household he was adored. 

I again extract from the Art Union, 1846 : 

" Not long ago, we spent an hour in the atelier of this excellent and truly 
great man ; we found in him almost the simplicity of a child, mingled with 
vast knowledge of human life and the infinite ramifications of human char- 
acter. We shall, at no distant time, procure such materials as will enable 
our readers to become more thoroughly acquainted with one of the great 
masters of Art of the modern world — a master whose productions may be 
ranked with the* more glorious bequests of genius in gone-by times ; but we 
can not introduce examples of his art without expressing the exceeding sat- 
isfaction we feel at finding the man so completely the representative of his 
works — lofty in mind, amiable in disposition, gentle, even to humility, in man- 
ner, while profound in knowledge and deep in the purest and best philosophy. 
Scheffer is not yet past the meridian of life : great things, even things greater 
than he has yet produced, are no doubt destined to issue from his pencil ; he 
is the artist for artists — but none the less the painter for universal man : 
while his creations bear the sternest tests of criticism and are faultless as 
works of Art, they are of the class which touch all hearts and satisfy all un- 
derstandings." 

Ary Scheffer was unmistakably that which one would have ex- 
pected him to be from his pictures — a religious man, a man of high 
and holy aspirations, who considered Art best employed when it ad- 
vocates and inculcates virtue. That he was a man of the loftiest 
genius, need not be said ; the world knows his worth, and all nations 
have accepted him as one of their very foremost teachers who 
delight while they instruct. 

Although, from time to time, I made acquaintance with other 
leading artists of France, these are the only three over whose names 
I need detain my readers. 

There is one other memory to which, however, I will ask permis- 
sion to refer. It is that of the King, Louis Philippe, who at the 
time of which I mainly write in this chapter — 1831 — had so very 
recently ascended the throne of France. I was not presented to 
him, though I might have been, and regretted I was not, for it was 



236 LOUIS PHILIPPE. 

then, as it is now, notorious that he received English men of letters 
with more than courtesy, indeed with cordial welcome, and that his 
remembrances of England were those of affection and gratitude. 
In 1830 he was fifty-seven years old ; he died in 1850. In 1848 he 
abdicated, and passed the brief residue of his checkered and event- 
ful life at Claremont. 

It was some years afterward — in 1849 — when he was an exile, 
residing in the borrowed house of his son-in-law, Leopold, King of 
the Belgians, that I had the privilege of an interview with the ex- 
King of the French. 

I was at that time a resident at Addlestone, the pretty village in 
Surrey, to which I may have occasion hereafter to refer. Some 
question as to the value of a picture by a renowned French artist 
had arisen ; I was consulted, and the King expressed a wish that I 
should wait upon him. I did so. I was shown into the library at 
Claremont, and after a short time an equerry entered and said, " Le 
Roi s'approche." I was not till then aware that he retained the title 
after his abdication. I rose and bowed with respect approaching 
homage ; he received me with great courtesy, but spoke somewhat 
rapidly. I was, of course, standing ; after a pause he said, " Sit, 
sir," in a tone that showed me he was to be obeyed, and I at once 
complied. The audience with which his Majesty honored me con- 
tinued for more than an hour ; he asked me many questions, and 
made several comments on the answers I gave. There was only one 
sentence, however, that it was material to keep in memory. Speak- 
ing of the France of the moment, he said, " I gave them my grand- 
son, and they threw him from them like a dirty rag." 

The King Louis Philippe left on my mind an impression of the 
very happiest nature. I felt for him respect nearing regard, as much 
as it could be, remembering the space that separated one so high 
from one so humble ; and I am very sure that the stories we have 
heard of his lovable nature, of his habits and occupations and en- 
joyments when away from the cares and ceremonies of state, were 
founded on strict truth. There have been many to tell us this, but 
I desire to add myself to the long list of those who, having been 
suffered to approach Louis Philippe in the privacy of domestic life, 
regarded him with a sentiment akin to affection. 

It was my only visit to Claremont ; but two or three years after- 
ward, when the gracious and good man was at rest in the plain mau- 
soleum at Weybridge, Mrs. Hall, who had written in the Art Journal 
a memory of which the Queen Marie Amelie approved, received an 
intimation that she would be permitted to'be present at a commemo- 
rative mass in the chapel. There she saw the Queen. Previously 
she had received from her a beautiful and valuable souvenir brooch. 

Although apparently departing from a plan, I will in this chap- 
ter add to my memories of Delaroche, Ary Scheffer, and David, 



KAULBACH. 



237 



those of Kaulbach, Cornelius, Rauch, and Moritz Retzsch. My ac- 
quaintance was made with them, not in France, but in Germany, 
when visiting that country in 1850 to collect materials for the 1851 
Art Journal Catalogue of the Great Exhibition. 

I consider Kaulbach * the greatest and noblest painter of the cent- 
ury. Some may have excelled him in refined grace and others in 
minuteness of finish ; but as regards the higher aims of mind that 
constitute genius, he, I think, surpasses them all. I saw the great 
painter first in his comparatively small studio at Munich, and subse- 
quently in his grand atelier — the staircase of the New Museum at 
Berlin. 

Kaulbach was under rather than above the middle height, agile 
of frame, rather handsome, with small features, a broad forehead, and 
singularly sparkling eyes. It was impossible not to note in him, at 
once, the man of genius ; he was rapid in speaking as well as in mo- 
tion, and carried in his whole man that which immediately indicates 
rare intellectual power. At Berlin, when I again saw him, he was 
working on a scaffold at his great frescoes on the walls of the New 
Museum. He descended to receive us, and chatted with us for some 
time. I asked him for the crayon he held in his hand, which he 
gave me, and seemed pleased when, as we turned to retire, I said, 
We have robbed the world of half an hour ! " 

Cornelius, on the other hand, was deliberate and slow ; but he 
was aged while Kaulbach was in his prime. His face was not ex- 
pressive — it was gentle rather then strong — but full of contemplative 
thought. He seemed to us one who, having done his duty, was sat- 
isfied to be an on-looker, rather than a continuous worker, in the 

* William Kaulbach. — Kaulbach's atelier is situated in one of the suburbs of 
Munich, quite sequestered from the bustle of the main body of the city and the rich 
dwellings of the fashionable world, in a garden near the river and the great park : 
thus forming a perfect country residence. He is excessively fond of nature, and 
therefore surrounds himself with various animals, whose figures and gambols he is 
delighted with, and allows at the same time the plants a free and unrestrained 
growth, the green vine-leaves clustering about the door of his dwelling almost bar- 
ring the entrance. Besides, his atelier abounds with ancient arms and costumes, 
stuffed birds, sculptures, drawings, prints of various masters, books on various sub- 
jects : he is also very fond of music. His person is very pleasing; he only speaks 
his native language, but speaks it with euphony and grace. He is sociable, 
friendly, full of complacency and affability, but against rudeness, presumption, 
folly, and baseness — severe to the extreme, which nobody will find fault with. He 
is endowed with an extraordinary skill and facility of drawing : which fits him 
in the highest degree for becoming a ready adviser of others, thus being enabled 
quickly to illustrate his opinions and views in a most scientific and artistic way. 
He is not averse to discussion on his own works with the intelligent — display- 
ing a quality so rarely met with in distinguished artists, that of tranquilly and 
patiently listening to contradiction or blame, or even reading it when printed. — 
Art Union, 1846. 



238 MORITZ RETZSCH. 

business of life. From him, also, I asked, and received, a crayon 
that had been nearly expended in labor. 

Rauch appeared to be — what I believe he was — a man of busi- 
ness in Art. He resembled rather a self-contented English squire, 
than a man who had hewed mighty marvels out of stone, created 
grand achievements in clay, and erected monuments to great men 
that added the perpetuation of memory to enduring fame. He gave 
me one of his smaller models, which I still have. 

I knew other leading German artists of the time, but none to 
whom attention need be directed. Unfortunately, when I visited 
their city, Diisseldorf, it "was out of season," and they were all 
away. 

But at Nuremberg I made the acquaintance of Professor Hei- 
deloff, a most renowned artist, whose works, more especially in 
mediaeval architecture, had made him famous. He undertook to 
write and illustrate for the Art Journal a series of papers on the 
knights of the Middle Ages ; and they were published in that jour- 
nal during the year 1852. We found him a most serviceable guide 
to the antiquities of venerable Nuremberg. 

Moritz Retzsch. — While at Dresden, in 1850, I passed a mem- 
orable day at the dwelling of the great artist, who has high fame in 
England — obtained chiefly by his " outlines " to illustrate Shak- 
spere. He had a pretty cottage, in the midst of vineyards, not far 
from the city, and seemed mightily to enjoy the retirement that sup- 
plied him with pure air, quiet, and the means of enjoying healthful 
exercise. I had induced him to furnish me with original designs to 
be engraved on wood for the Art Journal : twelve of them were pub- 
lished. To select them, with that view, from his full portfolio formed 
the ostensible motive of my visit ; but our language was that of the 
eyes, for I did not understand German, and no word of English 
could he speak. I was, however, usually accompanied by my secre- 
tary, Mr. Henry Murray, who acted as a competent interpreter ; 
without whom, indeed, I must have moved about in shackles. 

Mrs. Hall wrote, in January, 185 1, for the Art Journal, "A Morn- 
ing with Moritz Retzsch," from which I shall borrow a few passages : 
" His figure was somewhat short and massive, and his dress not of 
the most modern fashion. His head was magnificent. His whole 
appearance recalled Cuvier to us so forcibly, that we at once named 
the name of the great naturalist ; but when his clear blue eyes 
beamed their welcome, and his lips parted into a smile to give it 
words, we were even more strongly reminded of Professor Wilson : 
in each a large, well-developed head, masculine features, a broad and 
high forehead, a mouth strongly expressive of generosity and force ; 



ARTISTS OF FRANCE AND GERMANY. 



239 



and in both, the hair, sable-silvered, seemed to have been left to the 
wild luxuriance of nature. 

" When he closed the gate, it seemed as if he had shut from us 
an old friend, instead of one seen for so brief a space, and never to 
be met again in this world. But one of the dreams of our life had 
been realized : we had paid Moritz Retzsch the involuntary com- 
pliment of forgetting the artist in the warmth of our admiration for 
the man." 

Our visit to Moritz Retzsch, fertile as it was, had one peculiar 
interest, which, at this distance of time, I recall with exceeding de- 
light. It is thus expressed in Mrs. Hall's paper : 

" Some gallant husbands pen a sonnet to a wife on her birthday 
or the anniversary of marriage ; but Moritz Retzsch sketches his 
birthday ode — in which the beauty and worth of his cherished wife, 
his own tenderness and happiness, their mingled hopes and prayers, 
are penciled — in forms the most impressive and poetic. From year 
to year (I think they numbered forty) these designs have enriched 
the album of Madame Retzsch. Never was a more noble tribute 
laid at the feet of a lady-love, aged or young, even in the time of 
old romance. I shall never forget the holy pride with which she 
turned them over, one after another, explaining briefly the nature, 
incident, and object of each. 

" The allegories of Moritz Retzsch are not of the ' hieroglyphic 
caste,' such as roused the indignation of Horace Walpole ; there 
were no sentimental Hopes supported by anchors ; no fat-cheeked 
Fames puffing noiseless trumpets. They were triumphs of pure Art, 
conveying a poetical idea — a moral or religious truth — a brilliant 
satire, brilliant and sharp as a cutting diamond, by ' graphical repre- 
sentation ' ; each subject was a bit of the choicest lyric poetry, or an 
epigram in which a single idea or sentiment had been illustrated or 
embodied, giving a ' local habitation ' — a name, a history — in the 
smallest compass, and in the most intelligible and attractive form." 

It is needless to add that I became acquainted, during eight visits 
to Paris, with many of the leading artists of France, who accorded 
much praise to the Art Journal. Indeed, on this subject I might 
very greatly enlarge, but I believe the space at my command may 
be better occupied. Also, I obtained the aid of several first-class 
French line-engravers : their productions are among the very best 
the work contains. 

In like manner, I must pass over in silence my visits, in 1850, to 
Munich, Berlin, Diisseldorf, Hanover, Brussels, Antwerp, Amster- 
dam, the Hague, and a score of other cities ; indeed, possibly, these 
sources might furnish me with material for a hundred pages, instead 
of a single paragraph. My business was mainly with Art-manufact- 
urers, whose works, designed for the Great Exhibition, I desired to 
engrave. They readily fell into my view, when they understood 



2 40 ROSA BONHEUR. 

clearly they had nothing to pay for that which they naturally coveted 
— honorable and profitable publicity in England — and gladly sup- 
plied me with drawings ; for, it must be remembered, there were, 
in 1850, no photographers to be obtained. 

The labor in collecting such material will, as I have said else- 
where, be readily understood to have been very great. Subsequent 
catalogues were far more easily arranged, when, in nearly all cases 
where I desired specimens, it was only necessary for me to procure 
photographic copies of the works entered for contribution to an Ex- 
hibition. 

Few persons living or dead have been more indebted than I am 
to the art of photography : an art that enables the poorest Art-lover 
to obtain instruction and enjoyment from the works of all writers 
and of all ages. 

Rosa Bonheur. — I began this chapter with France, and with 
France I will end it. There still remains a renowned artist of that 
nation whose name I can not pass over in silence — " though last not 
least." I refer to Rosa Bonheur, whom I have the honor to rank 
among my acquaintances — who, I rejoice to know, is, in 1882, not 
in the decay, if not in the zenith, of fame. 

During a visit to London — her only one, I believe — she spent an 
evening at my house. She was then in the prime of life and in the 
full vigor of her genius. Her expressive countenance indicated 
keen intelligence and vivid perception ; her glance was rapid and 
observant, and her dark and penetrating eyes reminded me strongly 
of those of Paul Delaroche. Hair cut short and straight before and 
behind, gave her somewhat of a boyish look. She -was petite in per- 
son, and not perhaps handsome in face, for her features were sharp 
and thin; and she had the self-possession that is not always a grace 
in woman. 

On the evening she passed with us I had invited chiefly artists 
to meet her, but there was among the guests a Chinese mandarin of 
high rank. He spoke no word of English, and was in charge of an 
American gentleman, who acted as his interpreter. The Chinese 
volunteered to entertain the company with a song. It was so ex- 
cessively odd, so comically novel were the sounds, so strong the 
nasal intonations, so extremely ridiculous to our English eyes and 
ears the whole affair, that, in spite of a stern desire to be polite, 
there was no restraining a burst of laughter. After a vain attempt 
to stop herself by thrusting her handkerchief into her mouth, Mdlle. 
Bonheur led off ; others followed suit, and the room was speedily in 
a roar. The Chinese gentleman did not seem at all put out, but 
explained to us, through his interpreter, that what we laughed at 
was a tale of a dismally tragic nature, which, had we understood it, 
would have moved us all to tears. 

Rosa Bonheur left with us a very pleasant memory, as I am cer- 



GUST AVE DO RE. 



241 



tain she did with all who on the evening to which I allude had the 
gratification of meeting her. 

Gustave Dore. — I have through this book limited my recollec- 
tions to such as have been, but are not now, among the living 
worthies of the age. There is one, however, whose name I would 
fain add to that of Rosa Bonheur — who has pursued a course in Art 
far loftier than those of the accomplished lady, and who is happily 
still enjoying the highest honors that Art, her country, and England, 
can confer upon her. There is no painter of ancient or modern 
times so popular — deservedly popular — in England. There has 
never been an exhibition of Art-works in London so delightful as 
that — " The Dore Gallery " — which for many years has been so 
largely attractive, so surpassingly delightful, or so profoundly in- 
structive. 



16 



RECOLLECTIONS 
OF THE ORIGIN OF SOME PUBLIC CHARITIES. 

I can not but think I may contribute to the pleasure of my 
readers by supplying information concerning the origin and early 
progress of some of the charitable institutions that now occupy 
prominent places among the best of those that dignify and bless the 
Metropolis — all of which are entirely " supported by voluntary con- 
tributions." Year after year, those who were present at the birth of 
any one of them become, in number, less and less : even now there 
are few witnesses remaining ; and the future, if not the present, may 
thank me for the facts I shall furnish to aid the historian who will 
hereafter be their chronicler. 

Hospital for Consumption. 

I need not accord much space to this subject — deeply interest- 
ing though it be. It had long been a reproach to these kingdoms, 
that although they sustained so many charitable institutions to which 
persons afflicted with almost any disease might resort for alleviation 
or cure, there was one sad exception. For men and women threat- 
ened with, or stricken by, the fell disease that has been long known 
as, specially, the disease most fatal in England, there was no hospital 
to which they could resort.* The gates of all institutions were closed 
to them : applications for admission at any, were, by the " rules," 
rejected ; and the thus afflicted were doomed to despair and die. 

In 1840 there met at the house of Mr. Philip Rose,f now Sir 
Philip Rose, Bart., five gentlemen, of whom it is my happiness to 

* " To provide him with an asylum, to surround him with the comforts of which 
he stands so much in need, to insure him relief from the sufferings entailed by his 
disease, to afford him spiritual consolation, at a period when the mind is perhaps 
best adapted to receive with benefit the divine truths of religion, and to enable 
those who depend upon him to earn their own subsistence, are the great objects 
proposed to be accomplished by this new hospital." — Report of the Committee, 1845. 

f At 22 Hans Place : let the house be remembered as one of the Homes of 
England, whence issued a holy and blessed influence, that has since restored thou- 
sands to life and health, and brought under comparative subjection the chief home- 
curse of England. 



HOSPITAL FOR CONSUMPTION. 



243 



have been one. Mr. Rose was a solicitor, young in the profession 
and in life ; he had little power, except that which was given to him 
by a sagacious mind, large intelligence, thorough integrity, and a nat- 
ure purely philanthropic. He had a clerk who suffered under pre- 
monitory symptoms of consumption ; " it could be arrested if taken 
in time " — an opinion very often expressed or recorded. But that 
was of no avail. Where was the insidious and terrible disease to be 
" taken in time " ? Not in places where squalid misery augmented 
it ; not in houses where hungry children were perpetual reminders 
that necessaries were hard to be obtained, and where strengthening 
luxuries were as far off as the gold-fields of Ballarat. Mr. Rose had 
resolved to procure the admission of his clerk into one of the hos- 
pitals : but he was met on the threshold of every one of them, with a 
refusal of entrance.* Dismayed but not defeated, with the indomi- 
table energy that subsequently placed him among the foremost men 
of the age, he determined that his clerk should have a hospital of his 
own. Under these circumstances were " the two or three gathered 
together " in Hans Place. Scarcely a week passed before Mr. Rose 
had taken a house in Smith Street, Chelsea, appointed a matron, ob- 
tained the aids of willing doctors, and ultimately the co-operation of 
an influential committee, Mr. Rose becoming the honorary secretary, 
and working day and night with an astonishing amount of vigor — 
which he exhibits to-day as he did so long ago. The institution was 
made a success. The Hospital for Consumption has been ever since 
one of the chiefest blessings of the Metropolis ; and not of the Me- 
tropolis only, for patients have been received at the hospital from all 
parts of the kingdom. Branches were established at Bournemouth 
and other places ; while similar institutions have been formed at the 
East End of London, and in the Isle of Wight.f 

Invalids have journeyed, specially, from France, Spain, and other 
parts of the Continent, from America (and even, I believe, from Aus- 
tralia), in order to obtain admission and treatment in England. I 
need not say we had greatly at heart the welfare of this most valu- 
able institution. We had been present at its birth, witnessed its 

* " The plea on which the consumptive patient is refused admission into other 
institutions is, the lingering nature and almost certain fatality of the disease. But 
these very peculiarities give him the strongest claim on our sympathy. For when 
the poor man falls ill, the very sources of his subsistence are dried up ; acute dis- 
eases impoverish and embarrass him, but chronic diseases ruin him ; those who are 
dependent upon his exertions share his destitution, and are prevented from earning 
their own livelihood by the necessity of ministering to his wants." — Report of the 
Committee, 1845. 

f A "National Sanatorium " at Bournemouth was established in 1855 by the 
Brompton Hospital Committee ; but, after a brief experience of the difficulty of 
carrying on a second establishment so far off, a separate committee of residents in 
the neighborhood was formed, including a few members of the Hospital Board, and 
thenceforward the Bournemouth sanatorium — an admirable resort for consumptive 
convalescents — became an entirely distinct institution. 



244 HOSPITAL FOR CONSUMPTION. 

growth, and rejoiced at its vigor : until it ranked among the most 
powerful organizations for charity in the kingdom. From the very 
beginning, it has been well and honestly managed, receiving and 
meriting public confidence and approval. Sir Philip Rose, its hon- 
orary secretary, has guarded and guided it throughout, and the two 
acting secretaries (there have been but two from the commencement) 
have been upright, active, and zealous officers. He who now holds 
that position, Mr. Henry Dobbin, is as admirable an officer as could 
be found in any institution, devoting to it great ability and continual 
zeal, as well as tenderness and sympathy. 

So early as the summer of 1844, a bazaar held in the grounds of 
Chelsea Hospital largely augmented the funds. The friends of Mrs. 
Hall had so liberally supplied her stall that it contributed to the hos- 
pital fund more than ^450.* Among her contributions was a large 
easy-chair, given to her by the then eminent papier-mache manufact- 
urers, Jennens and Bettridge. It was raffled for : among those who 
" put in," was Mrs. Hall. Suddenly, a few hours afterward, a loud 
huzza was heard throughout the grounds : a procession bearing the 
chair advanced to her stall and presented it to her — her ticket had 
won the prize. She kept it many years as a pleasant memento ; but 
in 1880 presented it to the hospital, which it now graces. The cir- 
cumstance was made interesting by the fact that her aides-de-camp 
were the estimable and afterward distinguished brothers, Charles and 
Henry Kingsley, the sons of the then rector of Chelsea. It was an- 
other agreeable incident, that Jenny Lind sang two songs, to the old 
pensioners assembled in their Palace Hospital. We have since seen 
and assisted at many bazaars, but at none so brilliant as that. The 
sum received was very considerable. The money was raised to aug- 
ment the building fund : the dwelling in Smith Street was far too 
small, for both the requirements and the revenue. The center and 
left wing of the large and grand buildings in the Fulham Road were 
first erected, but not long afterward it became necessary to extend 
them. Among other plans to raise the requisite money was a con- 
cert. The circumstances connected with that concert are somewhat 
peculiar and interesting. Our neighbor was " Jenny Lind " ; when 
leaving London, after her first visit, she had promised Mrs. Hall to 
sing for the benefit of the hospital, the towers of which she could see 
from her dwelling, as we could see them from ours — the Rosery at 
Old Brompton. On her return to London she expressed her willing- 
ness to redeem her pledge. I soon got a committee formed, and, as 
its honorary secretary, I set to work to obtain important results. 
The programme announced that reserved seats would be two guineas, 

* Mrs. S. C. Hall wrote and printed, with many illustrations, and sold largely at 
the bazaar, a thin quarto book, entitled " The Forlorn Hope, a Story of Old Chel- 



HOSPITAL FOR CONSUMPTION. 



245 



and unreserved seats one guinea, but that no unreserved tickets 
would be issued until it was ascertained what number of reserved 
tickets would be required. When I showed the programme to Miss 
Lind, she was angry. To her German, or Swedish, experience, it 
seemed incredible that a large number of persons would each give 
such a sum to hear her sing ; she protested, therefore, against my 
act as dooming her to sing to empty benches, and in no way to aid 
the charity. I knew better ; she had never sung in public except on 
the stage ; there were many who greatly desired to hear her, who 
would not enter a theatre ; moreover, if the ticket was an extrava- 
gance, it was an outlay to assist a most valuable institution, and not 
a speculation for private gain. In the result, the concert-room at 
her Majesty's Theatre was allotted to us free ; it was capable of 
seating nine hundred persons. I sold nine hundred tickets, not a 
single ticket through any agent ; there was consequently no deduc- 
tion : the only expenses were advertisements, hire of chairs, and 
gratuities to the attendants. I paid in upward of ,£1,750 to the 
account of the hospital — the largest sum up to that time ever real- 
ized by a concert.* The proceeds formed the nucleus of the fund 
for building the second wing of the hospital. It is known as the 
" Nightingale wing," and it contains a ward named after Mrs. S. C. 
Hall.f 

* Among the audience was the Duke of Wellington, who handed Miss Lind to 
the platform. Every seat was occupied by the purchaser of a reserved ticket ; and 
I sold fifty unreserved tickets with an understanding that, as every seat was rilled, 
the party buying must take his chance of standing-room. There were several boxes, 
for each of which ten guineas were paid ; twenty guineas were paid for the two 
passages to the boxes, in which chairs were to be placed, but not until after the 
boxes on either side were filled. 

f Copy of Minute, Weekly Board, a,th August, 1848. 

" The Lind Concert Committee report that the sum of £1,766 15^. has been 
realized by Mademoiselle Lind's concert, and that, as the concert has been entirely 
free of all ordinary charges, nearly the whole of that sum will be appropriated to 
the charity. Whereupon it was unanimously resolved : 

" That the deep and earnest gratitude of the Committee be tendered to Made- 
moiselle Lind for her noble act of kindness in behalf of the charity accompanied 
by their cordial and heart-felt wishes for her future happiness and prosperity. 

"That Mademoiselle Lind be requested to allow the Committee the honor of 
adding her name to the list of life-governors. 

" That the Honorary Secretary be requested to communicate the foregoing reso- 
lutions to Mademoiselle Lind, and at the same time to convey to her the desire of 
the Committee to retain a lasting record of her generous conduct by calling the first 
ward that shall be opened after her name. 

" That the Committee can not forbear from again expressing to Mrs. S. C. Hall 
their deep gratitude for her continued and repeated interest manifested on behalf 
of this charity, and most particularly for the valuable assistance she has recently 
rendered it in connection with the concert of Mademoiselle Lind, from which has 
proceeded so large an accession to the funds of the hospital. 

"That the Honorary Secretary be requested to communicate the foregoing 
resolution to Mrs. S. C. Hall, and at the same time to inform her of the wish of 
the Committee to retain within the building a lasting record of Mrs. S. C. Hall's 



246 HOSPITAL FOR CONSUMPTION. 

Mrs. Hall has bequeathed — to be placed in this ward — a large 
photograph and two lithographs of the Queen and the Prince Consort 
presented to her, with, an autograph letter, from her Majesty, in 
1878. At no distant date they will be there as Mrs. Hall's most 
cherished record of gratitude and devoted affection for the Queen 
she loved so much — to whom she owed so much. 

There came to me an application from a young German com- 
poser expressing a desire to play for the charity. I submitted the 
letter, with other letters of the kind, to Miss Lind ; she selected it 
as one I might answer in the affirmative. She had never until then 
heard his name ; the selection was a mere chance (we too often use 
the word in lieu of that Providence which " shapes our ends "), but 
the applicant was Otto Goldschmidt, who not long afterward became 
the husband of Jenny Lind. A better husband, father, friend — a 
truer gentleman, of more entire probity, in all the relations of life — 
does not live. In common parlance, it was a lucky day for Jenny 
Lind when she agreed to sing for the Brompton Hospital for Con- 
sumption, and surely a lucky day it was for Otto Goldschmidt. 

It is not necessary to comment on the immense amount of good 
produced by this hospital, since its foundation in 1841 — from its in- 
fancy in Smith Street, Chelsea, when it received twelve patients, to 
its present high and palmy state in its palace at Brompton, where 
nearly four hundred patients are "accommodated." 

There are few, even now, who are cognizant of the admirable 
plan on which the hospital is conducted — a committee indefatigable 
in its zealous service, the best medical attendance such as no amount 
of wealth could readily procure, a scientific management of atmos- 
phere, food skillfully adjusted to the patient's condition and needs, 
cheerful apartments, and light and healthful occupations and amuse- 
ments. In a word, the loftiest and richest family in the kingdom 
could not call power and wealth more effectually to their aid than 
can the very poorest of the people, whose beloved are inmates of this 
hospital, "supported by voluntary contributions."* 

services in the cause of the charity hy calling one of the wards in the new wing 
after her name." 

* " But though the original object contemplated in its establishment has been 
to afford an Asylum to the consumptive patient, it is by no means the only one. 
By bringing a large number of such patients under the same roof, an opportunity 
will be afforded of more carefully studying the nature of this destructive malady ; 
and assuredly there is some ground of hope that He who has given man much 
power over nature, who has provided him, in the works of his own hands, with 
many powerful and effective remedies, and has so often crowned his well-directed 
efforts toward the alleviation of the sufferings of his fellow-creatures with success, 
may yet vouchsafe to guide him to some means by which this His greatest scourge 
may be stripped of its terrors. At least the Committee feel that they are fully 
justified in pointing out to the attention of the public, that if medical science be ever 
destined to achieve the great triumph of removing this fatal malady, or to effect 



HOSPITAL FOR CONSUMPTION. 



247 



It added much to my pleasure, when seated on the platform 
where his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales was laying the first 
stone of the new building (on the 17th of July, 1879), to know that 
it stood on the site of a row of houses — York Place — in one of which 
the poet Moore had lived. It was, I believe, No. 5. Sitting by the 
side of Moore and his admirable wife one evening at Sloperton, I 
said : " By-the-way, sir, will you tell me where you wrote the lines 
on the meeting of the waters ? — 

" ' Sweet vale of Avoca ! ' 

Some say one place and some another. There are, as you know, 
two ' sweet vales ' in which the waters ' meet ' ; a spot is pointed out 
under one umbrageous tree where the ' neighbors ' say you wrote 
them. I should much like to know." The poet shook his head, and 
with a solemn look and tone, said : " Ah ! that is a secret I never 
tell to any one ! " Mrs. Moore bent her head toward me, and audi- 
bly whispered, " It was in an attic at Brompton ! " I visited the 
" attic " not long afterward, and fancied I saw the poet penning one 
of the sweetest of all the Melodies. And again I visited, in imagi- 
nation, the lovely spot in the county of Wicklow, where the rivers 
Avon and Avoca "meet." It was visited by the poet in 1807, when 
the poem was suggested ; and when — 

" Friends, the beloved of my bosom were near, 
Who made each dear scene of enchantment more dear." 

It will not lessen the pleasure patients will receive, nor diminish 
their chances of health, if they hear in fancy (as I did in reality 
more than once) the poet sing these lines, on the very spot where 
they were written. 

There are few who could supply better evidence than I could as 
to the blessing this valuable institution has been to the community : 
averting or removing, often partially, sometimes effectually, the most 
mournful of all the diseases "that flesh is heir to." 

It has not been the lot of many to witness the fructifying of san- 
guine hopes — to find them, indeed, exceeded by reality. It has been 
that of Sir Philip Rose. God has given him the reward, while on 
earth, that so often awaits well-doing. For centuries to come the 
name of the founder of this — one of the very best of all the chari- 
ties — will be heard with honor, affection, and gratitude. 

On the 13'th of June, 1882, I had the happiness to attend the 
opening of the new extension building at Brompton ; prepared to 

the humbler good of arresting its progress with certainty, the hour of such improve- 
ments must surely be hastened by the establishment of an institution which will 
afford ample means for deep and sustained investigation of the disease." — Report 
of tJie Committee, 1845. 



248 GOVERNESSES' BENEVOLENT INSTITUTION. 

receive one hundred and thirty-seven in-patients, to be added to the 
two hundred previously placed in the older hospital directly oppo- 
site. It is needless to say, all improvements that science, thought, 
increase of means, and, above all, experience, suggested, have been 
carried into operation in order to make the hospital as perfect as it 
can be. The Earl of Derby, president of the corporation, delivered 
a suitable address. He told the audience that, since the commence- 
ment of the institution in 1841, it had accommodated twenty-nine 
thousand six hundred in-patients, and two hundred and eighty thou- 
sand out-patients ! 

If my feelings were of happiness and gratitude, what must have 
been those of Sir Philip Rose and his honored and estimable lady 
when half a dozen well-chosen words fell from the lips of Lord 
Derby, in acknowledgment of the debt, " owing, yet paid," to these 
active servants of God and man who planted the small seed in Smith 
Street, forty-two years before that day of its latest triumph ! 

Governesses' Benevolent Institution. 

The founders of the Governesses' Benevolent Institution were 
the Rev. David Laing and his estimable lady. For so long as seven- 
teen years, Mr. Laing was the honorary secretary. In i860 he was 
called away from earth-work : but in the onerous office his widow 
succeeded him ; its duties she still discharges, to her own honor, and 
to the great advantage of one of the best and most useful of all the 
charitable societies of the kingdom. It is a society of which the motto 
should be " gratitude." There are no recipients of bounty who have 
a better right to it ; in every case, it is a reward for a past — a past 
of hard, continuous, and ill-paid work — work upon which so much 
of the habits, characters, and usefulness, of many women depend ; 
for governesses are guides from the nursery, through girlhood to 
womanhood, and by them are, in a great measure, molded the char- 
acters of the wives and mothers on whose training depends so much 
of the virtue, piety, and rectitude, which make the happiness of every 
household. Next to the mother, it is the governess who creates the 
after-life. On this subject I borrow a passage from an article by 
Mrs. Hall, written for the Art Union in 1846 : 

" In England, it would be difficult to ascertain her position — charged with 
the sole care of the ' precious jewels,' perhaps, of an illustrious house ; con- 
sidered competent to cultivate their minds, to form their manners, to enlarge 
their views, that they may keep their positions and become all that is desired 
in English gentlewomen ; the person who does this, if admitted into society 
at all, is often thrust unintroduced into a corner, and expected to retire when 
the younger children are sent to bed, slighted by the servants, who consider 
her a servant, and looked upon as a person to be dismissed as soon as done 
with by the mistress ! For one governess who receives a pension for past 
services — services that can never be adequately recompensed — there are, pro- 
tected and prosperous, a hundred ladies' maids. It is not at all uncommon to 



GOVERNESSES' BENEVOLENT INSTITUTION. 249 

meet with pensioned servants ; but a pensioned governess is a rara avis. 
We find them in hospitals and workhouses, when they are overtaken by ill 
health, or have faded into old age." 

To Mr. and Mrs. Laing, then (but to her chiefly, for the woman 
is ever the fountain-head of good work), is accorded the glory of 
founding the Governesses' Benevolent Institution ; but the honor of 
originating the idea was not theirs — that belongs to a poor worn-out 
and poverty-encumbered governess, Miss Jane Tucker, who, some 
years previously, conceived the notion of such a society — perhaps 
mainly to have her own wants relieved : she was certainly somewhat 
clamorous as regarded them, and did not suffer in dignified silence. 
She, however, aroused public attention to the theme ; the matter was 
zealously taken up by Mr. and Mrs. Laing, a competent committee 
was formed, and a great charity has been the result. The small 
stream has become a grand river. The institution is too well known 
to need description in this book. Suffice it to say, there are now two 
hundred and fifty-two annuitants ; twelve housed in the asylum at 
Chiselhurst ; and that happily the excellent lady who has been its 
main prop from the commencement, is the honorary secretary, 
which she became on the death of her husband (Rector of St. Olave's 
in the City of London) in i860. 

The original committee was guilty of an error at the outset. The 
lady whose claim to an annuity was indubitable, and which should 
have been the very first for acknowledgment, made a public appeal, 
and a meeting was held, at which James Silk Buckingham, M. P., pre- 
sided ; the result was a large expression of sympathy, and aid suffi- 
ciently liberal to secure for her the annuity which the committee had 
declined to grant.* 

But Miss Tucker was not the first to promulgate the idea that the 
nation owed a debt to the aged governess. Several years previously 
a society had been established called the " Governesses' Mutual As- 
surance Society," formed on the plan of benefit societies. It did not 
last long, and its advantages were limited. The present Institution 
was commenced in 1841, but languished, did little, and would assur- 
edly have died out, but that Providence brought to its rescue the 
clergyman and his lady to whom I have here accorded due honor. 
Its prosperity may be dated from 1843 ; in that year, on the 25th of 
May, a public meeting was held at the Hanover Square Rooms, at 

* " Experienced in all the difficulties incident to the life of a governess, having 
entered on its duties in a clergyman's family at Taunton, at the age of sixteen, Miss 
Tucker long meditated the idea of rescuing her class — perhaps the most useful and 
important of all classes — from their humiliating and precarious position. A severe 
illness of seven years' duration, following upon forty years' labor as a governess, 
gave her additional reason to elaborate this idea. On her recovery, in the year 
1838, she threw together the thoughts that had thus occurred to her, and drew out 
a plan so clear in all its details, and so harmonious as a whole, that it has since 
been carried out to the very letter by the Committee of the Institution." — Extract 
from an advertisement for an annuity for Miss Tucker. 



250 



GOVERNESSES' BENEVOLENT INSTITUTION. 



which his Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge presided, and 
from that day the Institution became a "grand success." 

The objects of the society are well known, and do not demand 
descriptive details ; they are briefly these : 

1. The relief of governesses in temporary difficulties. 

2. The granting of annuities to aged governesses. 

3. The securing of deferred annuities to governesses upon their 
own payments. 

4. A home for the disengaged. 

5. Free registration. 

6. A college with classes and certificates of qualification. 

7. An asylum for the aged. 

When Mr. Laing commenced his work, the committee had a hun- 
dred pounds in the bank, " for the relief of governesses in temporary 
difficulties." In 1881 the ladies' committee had the power to dis- 
pense ^50 every fortnight, when they met ; in that way alone they 
have investigated 3,679 cases, and made grants to the amount of 

^46,457- 

Of its several branches, the granting of annuities to aged govern- 
esses is perhaps the most popular. There are half-yearly elections, 
when annuities, varying in amount (some of them have been given 
by the munificence of individual donors), but none less than ^25, 
are awarded, the recipients of which now number two hundred and 
fifty-two, besides two hundred and fifty-six who have held them and 
are now " gone to their rest." The sum of .£154,703, besides various 
stocks according to the wills of the donors, now stand in the name 
of the fund. 

The third, the Provident fund for the savings of those still work- 
ing, which are placed in government securities (till the time arrives 
for a well-earned income of their own providing), reaches an amount 
— and the amount is somewhat startling — rather more than ^"400,000. 

The fourth, the Home for ladies seeking situations, supplies a, 
center where they may meet with ladies seeking governesses, and in 
the mean time rest and have the companionship of others similarly 
circumstanced. Some idea of the work done may be formed from 
the fact that in one year the number of visitors to the Home and free 
registrations (in the same house) was 25,419. 

The fifth, free registration, supplies a list to the advantages of 
which all who bring proofs of respectability are admitted without 
any fee. Fifty-three thousand have, from time to time, entered their 
names. 

The sixth, the college, when fairly launched, and after some years 
of prosperity as a branch of the Institution, was separately incorpo- 
rated in 1853 as "Queen's College, London," and continues the 
work of higher female education, now become national. 

Perhaps the most interesting of all the branches of the Institution 
is the "Asylum for the Aged." It was first established at Kentish 



GOVERNESSES' BENEVOLENT INSTITUTION. 



251 



Town ; but it was found that to associate so many aged ladies in one 
building with a common sitting-room was objectionable. Tempers 
did not agree ; superintendents had delicate and difficult duties to 
discharge ; and generally a lack of harmony existed. On one side, 
perhaps, too much was expected ; on the other, it may be, too little 
sympathy was given ; at any rate, the committee resolved on the re- 
moval of the Homes some distance from London : on all accounts 
such a step was desirable, especially as it was part of the plan, not 
only that each lady should have a separate dwelling, but that accom- 
modation should be afforded to give to her the companionship of 
any relative or friend. The land at Kentish Town was advanta- 
geously sold, and land purchased at Chiselhurst. 

At Chiselhurst, when you have passed the mansion in which died 
the ex-Emperor of the French — the third Napoleon — and over the 
breezy common, past the carefully kept churchyard, you will come 
to some pretty cottages, with one rather more pretentious in the cen- 
ter. They are the nucleus of the asylum of the Governesses' Benev- 
olent Institution, which will, as funds come in, consist of three sides 
of a handsome square, with the garden and its beautiful old trees in 
the middle, and giving homes (twelve in all, for the present) to some 
who will enjoy the rest and repose of their evening of life all the 
more gratefully after having borne the burden and heat of the day. 
Such is the great tree that rose out of the small seed planted in 1843. 

For this admirable Institution we labored from the first ; the 
Home for Aged Governesses was the department of it we liked 
most. 

Mrs. Hall had for many years the right of presentation to one of 
the homes at Chiselhurst. She had given it to three ; one of the 
ladies thus aided was the sister of the artist Sass, who established, 
and for a long period conducted, the best and most useful of the Art 
classes in the Metropolis ; and one of them (the first) was a coun- 
trywoman of her own, the descendant of an almost regal family — a 
Miss Fitzgerald.* 

* Mrs. Hall wrote and published, for the benefit of the Institution, a story en- 
titled " The Old Governess." In the report for 1848, I find this reference to it : 

" Especial thanks must be offered to one who worked, heart and hand and 
head, in the cause ; and all who have read the tale of ' The Old Governess ' will, it 
is believed, agree that never did that gifted head and most kindly heart put forth 
a stronger claim to public admiration and sympathy." 

There can be no reason why I should not insert this copy of a resolution which 
I find among the cherished papers of Mrs. Hall : 

" Saturday, July 22, 1848. 

"Resolved, That the Committee of the Governesses' Benevolent Institution 
desire to express their deep sense of the energetic benevolence of Mrs. S. C. Hall 
in the recent kindnesses bestowed upon this Society. 

" That the realizing so large a sum by Mrs. Hall's personal exertions at the 
Fancy Sale, more than £350, is alone evidence of the personal interest felt and 



252 EARLY CLOSING. 

Mr. Laing, and especially Mrs. Laing, were — I believe from the 
commencement — greatly aided by the zealous co-operation of a gen- 
tleman who is still the Secretary of the Governesses' Institution — 
Mr. G. W. Klugh. It would be difficult to overestimate the value 
of his services. To great ability he has added large experience ; 
there can be no doubt that much of the prosperity enjoyed by the 
Institution, much of the public satisfaction it has given, and much 
of the good it has done, must be attributed to the unfailing energy, 
the devoted zeal, and the unwearied labors, of a gentleman who is 
the acting secretary in 1882, as he was in 1844. 

Early Closing. 

Although the project of " Early Closing " has been largely and 
widely " taken up " of late years, and is sustained by many of the 
greatest and best of British worthies, men as well as women — it was 
not always so. Writing now, nearly fifty years after the movement 
commenced, I can not but review the past as giving conclusive evi- 
dence that it has been, on the whole, a success." There can be no 
doubt that much has been done ; as little, that there is much yet to 
do. Some notes concerning the alpha of the reform will be accept- 
able to my readers. 

In the year 1835, there called upon us a young man who was an 
assistant at an extensive drapery establishment in Sloane Square. 
He did not find it hard to enlist our sympathies for a cause he advo- 
cated with earnest zeal as the result of sad experience. I placed 
myself at his disposal. He was arranging meetings in various parts 
of the Metropolis ; it was understood that when he could get no 
better chairman he was to summon me. In one year — 1836 — I took 
the chair at such meetings eleven times, often under circumstances 
very discouraging ; but a time came when Bishops of the Established 
Church, peers of the realm, and ministers of State became the chair- 
men ; and I was happy to take a subordinate place where I had been 
under the necessity of presiding.* 

Mrs. Hall did much more than that : she saw that without the 
aid of her sex very little reform could be accomplished ; and in that 
year, 1836, prepared the following pledge, which she induced her 
friends to sign, obtaining between four and five hundred signatures, 
some of her pledge-cards containing thirty names ; among them being 
those of prominent authors whose writings had advocated love of 

taken ; but ' The Old Governess,' expressly written for the occasion, amid the mul- 
tiplied avocations of a highly useful life, displays a warmth of feeling toward the 
Society which requires some marked token of gratitude from its supporters. 

(Signed) " D. Laing, M. A., Honorary Secretary." 

* Mr. Hall, at the meeting at Exeter Hall in 1856, moved a vote of thanks to 
Mr. John Lilwall, the able and indefatigable honorary secretary of the Associa- 
tion, " whose services to his class had never been surpassed, and rarely equaled." 



EARLY CLOSING. 



253 



God as manifested by efforts to advance and strengthen the cause 
of humanity. This is the pledge-card to which I refer : 

"THE LATE HOUR SYSTEM. 

" The Late Hour Employment in Shops is proved, beyond controversy, to 
be needless for any beneficial purpose, either to buyer or seller. 

" It is oppressive and cruel as well as unnecessary. It condemns many 
thousands of industrious persons to that ' excessive toil ' which destroys 
health, and retards or prevents religious, moral, and social improvement. 

" Out of it arise innumerable evils, and no single good : debilitated con- 
stitutions, impaired minds, absence of religious thoughts, ignorance of moral 
duties, or inability to perform them — are but some of these evils. Over- 
work is the sure passages to an early grave — for which there has been no 
preparation. 

" Believing this — considering these evils to be capable of easy removal, 
and that it is our duty to God and our neighbor to aid in removing' them : 

" WE, whose names are affixed — Ladies resident in London and its vicin- 
ity — resolve, under no circumstances, except in cases of absolute necessity, to 
make purchases, either ourselves or by our servants, at any Shop after six, 
or at the latest seven o'clock in the evening. 

" And, further, that we will endeavor, as far as possible, to deal, and en- 
courage dealing, at Shops which are closed at reasonable hours — and we de- 
sire to procure lists of such Shopkeepers as discountenance ' Late Hour 
Employment ' in our respective localities." 

So the good seed was planted, but it was long before it fructi- 
fied.* In 1847, a great meeting was held in the Free Trade Hall at 
Manchester ; it was largely attended ; upward of fifteen hundred 
persons were present, but few or none of the magnates of the City ; 
and the chairman was the poet Charles Swain — a most estimable 
gentleman and a true poet, but one who had not attained to high rank 
in letters, and who could not have been accepted as a popular sub- 
stitute for either Thackeray or Douglas Jerrold, who had been an- 
nounced to attend. Swain and I were the only representatives of 
Letters. Yes : the discouragements were many and strong. The 
progress of the Society was slow : " but " — I quote from one of its 
later reports — 

" It had its seat in a few earnest hearts, strong in their consciousness of 
right, and in their hatred of injustice and wrong, and ever content to oppose 
fortitude to defeat, perseverance to opposition, and to rise unsubdued from 
every apparent overthrow to renewed exertions — well knowing that what 
they had resolved to accomplish was but a deed of righteousness toward God 
and their fellow-creatures." 

* I recall to memory one of the earlier meetings. It was held somewhere in 
the neighborhood of Whitechapel, in a miserable hole under a railway, the roll of 
trains over which necessitated frequent pauses in the proceedings, while the atmos- 
phere was that of a city night-fog — damp, unwholesome, and disheartening. Yet 
the assembly was stirred to enthusiastic applause, and I had afterward reason to 
know that out of that meeting great and good results had arisen. 



254 



EARLY CLOSING. 



I have by me one of the much earlier reports : the list of the 
committee contained sixty names. In it there was but one member 
of the aristocracy — the ever-good Lord Ashley, now Earl of Shaftes- 
bury — and only three members of Parliament, James Emerson Ten- 
nant, Charles Handley, and John Pemberton Plumptre. But there 
were twenty clergymen of all denominations, ten physicians or sur- 
geons, ten private individuals, and twenty heads or partners in vari- 
ous establishments, who certainly for the most part having suffered 
tribulation, had learned mercy," but who were compelled by the exi- 
gencies of trade to do as others did, and not as they would have 
had others do. Of the sixty who formed that committee in 1843, 
there are but two now living — the Earl of Shaftesbury and S. C. 
Hall. 

It was not until 1856 that the movement obtained a status. A 
great meeting in July of that year was held in Exeter Hall, at which 
Lord Robert Grosvenor, M. P. for Middlesex, presided, and at which 
the Earl of Shaftesbury and Bishop Wilberforce eloquently spoke. 
It was a meeting primarily to bring before the public " the oppressed 
condition of the milliners' and dressmakers' assistants." 

Some years previously, the Hon. and Rev. Baptist Noel, an elo- 
quent and indefatigable writer for the cause, had obtained a prize 
offered by the " Metropolitan Drapers' Association." From the pref- 
ace to that essay I extract this passage : 

" Young men, from sixteen years of age to twenty-five or thirty, are en- 
gaged in drapers' shops daily about fifteen hours, of which fourteen hours and 
a half are actually employed in business. During this time they are not per- 
mitted to sit down or to look into a book, but are standing or moving about 
from morning to night, generally in an atmosphere exhausted by respiration 
and in rooms ill-ventilated. When night arrives, gaslights and closed doors 
complete the deterioration of the air, till at length it becomes almost pestifer- 
ous. Meanwhile their meals must be swallowed hastily, like the mouthful of 
water which impatient travelers afforded to a smoking post-horse in the mid- 
dle of a long stage. No exercise is allowed in the open sunshine, their re- 
laxation being to take a walk in the streets about ten o'clock at night, when 
the sober and virtuous part of the community have retired to their dwellings, 
or to smoke and drink away the last hour of their evening at a tavern, or to 
form pleasure-parties for the Sabbath. From the company of their friends, 
from all cultivated and virtuous society, they are, by their circumstances, ex- 
cluded ; all scientific institutions are closed against them by the lateness of 
their hours ; they are too tired to read after their work ; and when they throw 
themselves upon their beds, it is too often to breathe in the close bedrooms, 
where numbers are packed together, an air more pestilential than that which 
poisoned them during the day." 

With even greater eloquence and stronger force the Bishop of 
Oxford advocated the cause of the weaker sex. I extract a passage 
from the admirable speech of that prelate, the son of one of the 
grandest men that "ever lived in the tide of time," who bore the al- 
most consecrated name of Wilberforce and added to its glory ; and 



EARLY CLOSING. 



255 



the father of another Wilberforce of whom it is enough to say that 
he is worthy of the other two — his grandfather and his father : 

" The remedy is to be found in the quickened moral feeling of the com- 
munity of this nation, and bringing an intelligent public opinion to bear upon 
this great question. My Lord, do what we will, we must always have this 
evil springing up in one form or other, because it comes from the overflowing 
spring of selfishness in the human heart. I am convinced that this evil must 
recur as long as man continues to be swayed in his actions, as Scripture says 
with a marvelous accuracy of expression, by the ' mammon of unrighteous- 
ness.' It is the special attribute of a well-informed Christian public opinion, 
that it brings to bear forces which can not be resisted, not only upon one or 
two of the emergent questions of an evil system, which is all direct law can 
do, but it brings this to bear upon the root from which these evils spring. It 
is as, when the sun rises, the creatures of darkness fly away ; it is as, when 
its rays penetrate into some deep cavern, the creatures of darkness depart, 
and creatures of light abound ; and so I do believe that it may be here." 

In this case, the remedy was found : the cruel system was sup- 
pressed ; evidences were given that " religious sympathies " did not 
" waste themselves in the mere expression of good wishes to lessen 
the burden of the heavy-laden, and let the oppressed go free." 

The heavy-laden and oppressed of this class of workers are now, 
thank God, under the direct and effectual protection of the law. At 
that grand meeting I took part. I presume to quote passages from 
what I said : 

" We did not, and do not now ask for the abolition of human labor, or 
even for an unreasonable lessening of it. We know that man is born to toil, 
and that labor augments enjoyment ; but we ask that a voice be raised against 
evils which man should not sanction, and of which God declares His disap- 
proval. We ask you to move now in this great matter. I am happy to see 
here many of the earliest friends of the Early Closing Association. Their 
efforts have not been without results — results which have alike benefited the 
employed and the employer ; and which have been accompanied by none of 
the evils foretold or threatened by lukewarm supporters, or open and avowed 
adversaries. The Association has been, under Providence, the means of car- 
rying conviction so widely as to be almost universal — that over-toil is as much 
opposed to sound policy as it is to true humanity : and that judiciously to 
ameliorate the condition of those who labor, is to carry out the will of God, as 
well as to advance the best interests of man. 

" We have positive assurance and indisputable proof that, in a wealthy 
city, and among an enlightened and merciful population, tens of thousands of 
young girls, under the age of twenty, were worked daily and nightly during 
eighteen hours of the twenty-four, in small and ill-ventilated and overcrowded 
rooms, often miserably fed because always miserably paid, rarely hearing a word 
of kindness, or seeing a look of sympathy, but watched — only that as much 
of profit as possible might be gained out of the inhuman toil to which they 
were subjected ; I say every voice should be raised to deprecate a course so 
accursed, so utterly inhuman in the estimation of God and man. Yet it is of 
such a system we tell you, and of its existence we give you positive and indu- 
bitable proof. 

" Yes, it is the cause of young women often well born, well nurtured, and 



256 EARLY CLOSING. 

frequently well educated, that we plead this evening. It is a trite observation 
that— 

" ' Man's inhumanity to man 

Makes countless thousands mourn.' 

But the poet has another line, less known perhaps, but more emphatic — 

" ' He who upholds oppression shares the crime ! ' " 

I am writing in 1882 of matters as they existed in 1835 and long 
afterward. The Early Closing Society still exists, and is still labor- 
ing to obtain for shop assistants more freedom from restraint. I as- 
sume the following statement from one of its latest reports, 1877-78, 
to be correct : 

" There are upward of 200,000 shop-assistants in London, many thousands 
of whom are employed from 80 to 90 hours per week. To say nothing of the 
evil results of long standing, impure atmosphere, etc., the simple fact of being 
employed so many hours is an effectual barrier to moral and social recreation. 
It has long been conceded that recreation for the mind is as essential to the 
welfare of an individual as food is to the body." 

I earnestly hope — although not without some misgiving — that the 
boons which have been granted — the enormous difference that exists 
between the condition of shop-workers in 1835 an d in 1882 — maybe 
altogether for good. I fear that we have gone to the other extreme, 
that the Saturday half-holiday and the leaving off work before sun- 
down, considered now to be the condition under which labor is sold 
and bought, is an evil as great as the over-toil of a period within the 
experience of many who are not old. Certainly, the first agitators of 
the early-closing movement did not contemplate so great a change ; 
the demands of its originators and promoters by no means went the 
length of rendering the employer the servant rather than the master 
of the hands he employed. Whether the result of the early efforts 
of its friends, upholders, and patrons has been altogether for good, is a 
question upon which I am unable to enter. Some of the most ex- 
tensive employers of labor have characterized the Saturday half-holi- 
day as an evil, affirming that the young men and women who are 
released from work early do not spend their afternoons and evenings 
in healthful exercise and wholesome recreation, but that the half- 
holiday largely helps to swell the coffers of the public-house. If it 
be so, that is a greater evil than the evil that public opinion in a de- 
gree removed : better a mind ignorant than a mind depraved ; a 
body diseased by lack of air and exercise than a body enfeebled by 
drink ; a character unenlightened by lack of knowledge than a char- 
acter degraded by habits and associations that are fertile sources of 
poverty, misery, and crime. 

The Army and Navy Pensioners' Employment Society. 

Those who meet in our streets men clad in dark uniforms, and 
know them to be members of a numerous body of useful servants of 



PENSIONERS' EMPLOYMENT SOCIETY. 



257 



the public, will feel and express gratitude to Captain Edward Wal- 
ler, who formed the corps — first, to add, as it greatly does, to the 
general comfort and convenience, and next, to reward the wounded 
or discharged soldiers who have done good service to their country, 
and have a just right to such recognition and reward as the country 
can bestow on them. 

The corps is admirably trained and disciplined : the men are 
made useful in many ways ; their payments depend on their services ; 
they are entitled to, and receive, confidence — very rarely indeed have 
they betrayed it, and I believe the appearance of any one of them at 
a police-office, charged with crime, has never yet occurred. Captain 
Walter and the officers associated with him may claim to rank as pub- 
lic benefactors. They have largely served the public without the 
smallest demand upon the public purse. 

The " Corps of Commissionaires " in a measure arose out of the 
" Pensioners' Employment Society " — a society formed and estab- 
lished in July, 1855. It originated with Mr. William Jerdan, the 
author of many useful books, and for nearly forty years editor of the 
Literary Gazette. At that time he had retired from active labor as a 
man of letters. It occurred to him that some means of procuring 
employment for wounded soldiers who were returning from the 
Crimea ought to be, and might be, found. He had no difficulty in 
forming a committee to carry out his project. It was composed 
chiefly of his private friends, who lent him their names, but did little 
more to promote the work. There were, I think, fifteen members, 
but ten of the fifteen did not attend a single meeting, leaving the 
whole of the labor and all the responsibility to the three or four who 
were willing to accept both. In reality there were but two members 
— Mr. W. E. D. Cummings and myself. Three were required to 
form a quorum ; therefore a gentleman who daily left the city at five 
o'clock, on his way home to Lowndes Square, gave us a " look in," 
signed the book, and left us to do the work. 

I did not grudge the reward to those who, at the eleventh hour, 
came into the vineyard to take the place of those who had borne the 
burden and heat of the day. 

It was no wonder that things went wrong. Mr. Jerdan was called 
upon to retire from the position he held as " Registrar and Honorary 
Secretary " a very few weeks after his appointment to it, and in the 
then working secretary no confidence was placed. 

Yet, as regards the purpose of the society, much good — even 
more than we anticipated — was effected. 

The duty of the committee was to register all applicants whose 
good character was sustained by testimony furnished from their regi- 
ments (commanding officers), from places where they had been em- 
ployed before enlisting, and the clergymen of the parishes in which 
they had been born or resided. The situations obtained were of all 
classes and orders — park gate-keepers, messengers, bank porters, in 
17 



258 PENSIONERS' EMPLOYMENT SOCIETY. 

fact, half a hundred employments, for which they were still fitted, 
although in many cases minus a leg or an arm. They had pensions, 
to be sure, but their pensions varied from yd. to is. 2d. a day. Fre- 
quently the applicants had no pensions at all — nothing to help them 
except their characters as dutiful soldiers and good men. 

Mr. Cumming was earnest and zealous in the work. I did my 
best ; but it will not be difficult to believe that the affairs of the 
society became involved in inextricable confusion. A considerable 
debt was due ; the creditors threatened legal proceedings against 
Mr. Cumming and myself, the only two members of the committee 
they knew, because the only two who did any work — without remu- 
neration, of course, and at a large sacrifice of time. A sum of be- 
tween ^300 and ^400 must be paid " somehow," and I was prepar- 
ing an appeal,* with a sort of compulsory hint, to members of the 
committee," when a fortunate incident occurred. Captain Walter 
had established the Corps of Commissionaires. He applied to us for 
names of deserving pensioners from our list into whose antecedents 
we had inquired : and, learning the involvements of the society, 
made the liberal proposal of taking it entirely off our hands, pay- 
ing all debts owing, and — that which we most desired — continu- 
ing the society, then on the eve of disruption. It is needless to 
say that the generous proposal was at once closed with. There 
was but one condition attached — that each member of the existing 
committee should send in a formal resignation, so that Captain 
Walter might receive the society freed from all incumbrances — 
except its debts. 

The Pensioners' Employment Society is vigorously alive in 1882, 
after its twenty-seven years of existence, and, with its military or- 
ganization is, I am sure, doing much good, infinitely more than our 
shackled committee of two or three could have done in 1857 ; and 
has been a fertile blessing to those soldiers and sailors who, in the 

* On the loth of June, 1857, the following circular was issued : 

"22 Parliament Street, June io, 1857. 
" Permit us to ask your attention to the claims of the Pensioners' Employment 
Society, briefly, inasmuch as we inclose printed reports from which you will learn 
that the society was established two years ago in order to obtain employment for 
pensioners, many of whom have been wounded, and the majority of whom have 
pensions so small as to leave them hardly any resource but to beg. We have pro- 
vided, directly and indirectly, situations for nearly 500 of these gallant and deserv- 
ing men, but there remain vipon our registry (augmenting daily) upward of 1,600 
able and willing to work and with good characters — facts we carefully inquire into 
and ascertain. We believe, if assisted, we can obtain useful and profitable employ- 
ments for a very large proportion of them, especially if we procure the means of 
giving extensive publicity to our proceedings. We therefore respectfully but ear- 
nestly ask your aid and entreat your examination of the accompanying documents. 

" S. C. Hall, F. S. A., 
" W. E. D. Cumming (Lloyd's), 
"J. A. Moore (Major), 
" James Hunt (Ph. D.)." 



PENSIONERS' EMPLOYMENT SOCIETY. 



259 



simple language of the first appeal, "have deserved well of their 
country." * 

I have little more to add to this statement. Mr. Cumming, an 
underwriter at Lloyd's, an excellent and estimable gentleman, had 
all his wealth in ventures on the sea — or thought he had. One night 
a terrific storm shook the house in which he lived. He awoke fright- 
ened, was haunted by a terror that all his ships were wrecks, that he 
was ruined (it was afterward ascertained that his losses were trifling), 
and he was found in the morning under his garden hedge dead — 
having taken laudanum. Latterly he supplied the funds necessary 
for carrying on the society, as well as giving his time to its interests. 

I had the satisfaction to receive from Captain Walter a letter 
thanking me for what I had done for the society, " appreciating my 
services very highly," and expressing a hope " that although I had 
expressed a wish to retire from it," I would "continue to take a 
warm interest in its future proceedings." 

It was a happy event when that excellent gentleman took the 
matter in hand, removing it from the committee, relieving the two 
working members from a heavy burden, and giving to the society 
a vigor and power it could not have obtained under our committee- 
ship. 

The Corps of Commissionaires (as I have shown, entirely the idea 
of Captain Walter) has now assumed gigantic proportions. If it be 
a pleasure to many to read the results as reported at one of the latest 
meetings of the governors of the corps, I hope I am not arrogant in 
saying it is a source of deep and earnest joy to me. As I have in- 
timated, but for the auspicious resolve of Captain Walter, the Pen- 
sioners' Employment Society would in 1857 have collapsed, and not 
creditably, for there would have been considerable difficulty in pay- 
ing its debts. How warmly, therefore, I must second the vote of 
thanks rendered to Captain Walter at the meeting to which I have 
referred ! — 

"'To Captain Walter,' the speaker (Captain Morley) said, 'the national 
gratitude was due — a fact which could not be sufficiently recognized — for his 
beneficent labors in establishing on a firm basis and carrying on almost un- 
aided for a long time this institution for the advantage of well-conducted sol- 
diers and sailors after the period of their service was ended. The prospect 
of obtaining situations by means of this corps encouraged men to persevere 

* " Army and Navy Pensioners' Employment Society, 44 Charing Cross, S. W. 
To employers requiring the services of trustworthy men to perform the duties of 
hall and door keepers to public and private establishments, messengers, attendants 
at asylums and schools, gate, office, time, and store keepers, grooms, helpers, por- 
ters, watchmen, charges of chambers or premises, drill instructors, constables, etc. 
It is notified for general information that a number of eligible men are available 
for any of the above situations, who can be strongly recommended. Apply, either 
personally or by letter, to the Secretary, at the above address. Office hours from 
ten till four. No fees or expenses to employers or the employed." 



260 THE NIGHTINGALE FUND. 

in good habits while in the army, and it made service in the army and navy 
in some way the stepping-stone to civil employment.' " 

On that occasion Lord Napier of Magdala said : 

" Most of the great undertakings in England had arisen through private 
exertions, through private benevolence, and through the private energy of 
individuals. The Corps of Commissionaires had arisen through the exercise 
of these great qualities in one man combined — through the unrivaled perse- 
verance, public spirit, and true philanthropy of Captain Edward Walter, 
who, in spite of the greatest difficulties, in spite of receiving but slight en- 
couragement from either the public or the authorities, had established this 
corps, and had carried it on in a manner to make it an honor to the country." 

It will be remembered that on their return from the Crimea the 
soldiers were received with an ovation in the streets of London. On 
that occasion I put forth an advertisement of which this is the open- 
ing passage : 

" When the Guards and other regiments march through the cities of Lon- 
don and Westminster, will it not occur to the admiring and grateful specta- 
tors to inquire, how a large number of those gallant fellows are to be pro- 
vided for, discharged from the service, as they must be, from wounds or other 
ailments, with 6d. or 8d. a day ? " 

On that document I find this comment in one of the few papers 
I have kept : 

" Let it be known to all who require servants of good character, of ap- 
proved fidelity, and of the most worthy antecedents, that ' The Pensioners' 
Employment Society ' provides them ; takes our soldiers as their names dis- 
appear from the muster-roll, tests their characters, and offers to employers 
none but those in whom courage is but the guarantee of other virtues. Such 
a society, so benevolent in its objects, and so enlightened in the means it 
employs to carry them into effect, can not but receive, as it so well deserves, 
a liberal amount of public support." 

The Nightingale Fund. 

Early in the year 1855, when the war in the Crimea had filled 
the hospitals of Eastern Europe with the sick and wounded of our 
armies, those who had beloved friends there were startled into grate- 
ful admiration by the work that good women were doing to lessen 
the sufferings of the brave men who were fighting battles. " Sisters 
of Charity," though long and happily familiar in other countries, 
were comparatively unknown in the British Islands ; and when intel- 
ligence reached home that a number of highly-born and richly-en- 
dowed ladies were enduring hard and incessant labor in hastily con- 
structed, inadequately furnished, and, until then, utterly neglected 
hospitals — doing, in short, the work of the coarsest menials — doubts 
were at first cast on the motives as well as the capabilities of these 
volunteer aids to the surgeons on the army staff. Prejudice, how- 
ever, rapidly gave way. Conviction quickly followed as to the vast 
utility of the novel auxiliaries, and a foretaste of national gratitude 



THE NIGHTINGALE FUND. 2 6l 

was soon transmitted to the seat of war — to cheer, encourage, and, 
in a measure, reward, the admirable helpers there — gratuitous work- 
ers for their country and humanity. 

Foremost among these admirable and holy workers was Florence 
Nightingale. The name rapidly became a household word through- 
out the British Islands, and in all the colonial dependencies of the 
Crown ; it was universally hailed with enthusiastic affection ; the 
touching and beautiful lines of Longfellow, " The Lady of the Lamp," 
consecrated it. The heart of England beat warmly in response, and 
the feeling was universal that some means must be found, especially 
by women, to recompense one who was doing so much of woman's 
best and holiest work in the plague-stricken battle-fields of the 
East. 

Happily, Florence Nightingale is living, and my pen can not 
progress as otherwise it would surely do. I know her strong objec- 
tion to publicity ; that to " do good " must not be in her case to 
"find fame." Even what I have here written — tame and utterly 
insufficient as it is — she would erase, if she could. My apology to 
her must be for the little I have said, and not for the much I have 
left unsaid. 

Some account of the origin and early progress of the Nightingale 
Fund will interest the reader. It was designed to give expression 
to a general feeling — 

"That the noble exertions of Miss Nightingale and her associates in the 
hospitals of the East, and the invaluable services rendered by them to the 
sick and wounded of the British forces, demand the grateful recognition of 
the British people." 

The beautiful and touching lines of the poet Longfellow are so 
well known that I need not quote them. Not so is a poem of deep 
pathos by my friend Francis Bennoch, F. S. A., one of the com- 
mittee of the Nightingale Fund. From that poem I borrow a stanza 
here : 

" When wounded sore in fever's rack, 
Or cast away as slain, 
She gently called their spirit back, 

And gave them life again. 
Her cheering voice, her smiling face, 

All suffering could dispel, 
With grateful lips they kissed the place 
On which her shadow fell." 

The muse of the Seven Dials was also evoked. Broad-sheet 
ballads were sung and sold in the streets. I have some now before 
me ; the following is an extract from one of them : 

" When sympathy first in thy fair breast did enter, 
The world must confess 'twas a noble idea, 
When through great danger you boldly did venture, 
To soothe the afflicted in the dread Crimea. 



262 THE NIGHTINGALE FUND. 

No female on earth sure could ever be bolder ; 

When death and disease did you closely surround, 
You administered comfort to the British soldier — 

You soothed his sorrows and healed his wound." 

Great events often arise out of trivial causes. In the September 
of 1855 Mrs. S. C. Hall, earnestly feeling that the services of Miss 
Nightingale should receive the emphatic recognition of women, ad- 
dressed to several women, letters asking for aid and co-operation to 
effect that object. They were almost exclusively to personal friends, 
her first idea being very limited as to design and cost. To all her 
applications she received approving answers, with tenders of pecu- 
niary aid. 

The sum offered so greatly exceeded the sum then required that 
she wrote to Miss Nightingale's personal friends, Lady Canning and 
Mrs. Sidney Herbert, inquiring what sort of testimonial would be 
most acceptable to the heroic woman. Both stated, in reply, that she 
would receive none. Mrs. Hall did not then know that Miss Night- 
ingale was a high-born and, in a degree, wealthy, lady — at least, 
perfectly independent as regarded pecuniary resources. Further 
correspondence elicited that if it were possible to obtain a sum suf- 
ficient to establish and endow a hospital for the teaching and train- 
ing of nurses, that was probably a " testimonial " she would accept : 
it was the cherished object of her life. 

I was then called to council. I expressed my belief that such 
sum — for such a purpose — combining utility with gratitude, might 
be obtained. The result was a visit from Mr. and Mrs. Bracebridge 
(the associates of Miss Nightingale in the mission of mercy), and a 
resolve to make an appeal for national aid. I readily consented to 
act as honorary secretary, and to do all the work — upon one condi- 
tion, that the friends of the lady should obtain for me the co-opera- 
tion of a gentleman high in position, who should share with me — 
not the labor, but the responsibility. The consent of the Right 
Honorable Sidney Herbert was accorded ; it sufficed to make suc- 
cess certain.* I had no doubt of the issue from the day he con- 
ferred on me the honor of associating my name with his. I at once 
set to work. Three days afterward I had fitted up chambers in 
Parliament Street, engaged the services of a clerk, and, what was of 
infinitely greater consequence, a financial secretary. Within a fort- 
night, a public meeting was held at Willis's Rooms, at which his 
Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge presided, and the work 
commenced, a committee having been selected and approved. 

The financial secretary, to whose skill, judgment, and integrity I 
attributed much of the issue, was Mr. Henry Dobbin, who is now, 

* " Mr. Herbert will have great pleasure in acting as your colleague as Honor- 
ary Secretary. 

" From Mrs. Sidney Herbert to S. C. Hall. 
" November 4, 1855." 



THE NIGHTINGALE FUND. 263 

as he has been for twenty-five years, the indefatigable secretary of 
the Hospital for Consumption. Every day in his presence I opened 
all letters, placed all offerings in a " strong box," and each day he 
took the receipts of the day to Coutts's Bank. The careful regular- 
ity led to this : that although money came to the office in many odd 
ways — through the post, left at the door — checks, notes, gold, and 
silver, I never found that a single contribution had gone astray. 
No one at any time wrote to me to ask why his contribution, much 
or little, had not been acknowledged in the advertisements. 

I waited upon Mr. Herbert in Belgrave Square. His kindness 
and courtesy increased my desire to be associated with him ; it was 
an honor, and it was also a happiness. I have never seen a man 
who gave me a better idea of what the knight sans peur et sans re- 
proche may have been. His manners were those of a perfect gentle- 
man, far removed from sternness, yet as far from familiarity. A 
beggar would have taken a chair in his presence if he had desired 
the beggar to be seated. He was gentle rather than genial, yet 
about all he said or did there was evidence that he must have been 
loved as well as respected, however he might have been circum- 
stanced, in whatever position he might have been placed : and that 
position would, had he lived even into middle age, have been the 
very highest he could have derived from his sovereign and his coun- 
try. He was not an orator, certainly — not perhaps even eloquent, 
but his language was persuasive and convincing ; he always spoke 
to a purpose, and seemed to make friends of opponents without an 
effort at conversion. Add to this, rare personal advantages — tall, 
slight without being thin, handsome yet manly features, expressing 
ability rather than genius, but obtaining confidence, by a sort of 
instinctive faith in his firmness, probity, and truth. It is thus I re- 
call him when I had the privilege of waiting on him in Belgrave 
Square.* 

I brought to the task — but only in common with millions — a 
grateful homage to the lady who had given to a terrible war its sole 
redeeming feature (always excepting the charge of the "six hun- 
dred," which was surely worth its terrible cost), and whose destiny 
seemed to be to lessen the sufferings to which humanity must be 
subjected as long as the primal curse endures and suffering is a pen- 
alty of earth-life ; not only where armies meet in deadly combat, but 
in public hospitals, and in the private homes from which disease 

* Almost his first question was as to how much I expected to obtain by a public 
appeal ; and when I answered " fifty thousand pounds," he received my assertion 
with an incredulous laugh, saying that fifteen thousand would be much nearer the 
mark. My comment was this : " Sir, I do not expect so large a sum — it will cer- 
tainly be thirty thousand ; but if we keep in our minds that lesser sum we shall 
never go beyond it : if we keep steadily in view the larger sum, our efforts will 
be to reach it, and the amount will, I am very sure, be between the one and the 
other." 



264 THE NIGHTINGALE FUND. 

and pain and sorrow can never be quite shut out, and where trained, 
intelligent, and thoughtful nurses enter as blessings incalculable. 

The first object was to form a committee. I presume to say it 
was judiciously formed : it was not easy to do so. The " High 
Church " proclivities of Mr. Sidney Herbert were well known. 
When he sent me a name to place on the list, it was generally that 
of one who, right or wrong, churchman or layman, had the same 
leaning. It was easy to foresee the danger thence arising. It had 
been more than insinuated that Miss Nightingale had similar views. 
The suspicion received strength from the fact that her aids in the 
hospitals were called " sisters," and wore — for the convenience of 
nursing — a dress that was described as a "nun's dress." Obviously 
there was peril here. I met it thus : when Mr. Herbert sent me a 
name which might have been that of a " suspect," I inserted it of 
course, but associated with it that of a clergyman or layman of oppo- 
site opinions. I presume to say that — looking at the matter after 
eight-and-twenty years — if I had not acted thus prudently the sub- 
scriptions to the Nightingale Fund would not have reached one half 
of the sum they did reach. The committee, headed by his Royal 
Highness the Duke of Cambridge, comprised as far as possible every 
variety of " interest." There were three dukes, nine other noble- 
men, the Lord Mayor, two judges, five " Right Honorables," fore- 
most naval and military officers, physicians, lawyers, London alder- 
men, clergymen, dignitaries of the Church, dignitaries of Noncon- 
formist churches, twenty members of Parliament, and several eminent 
men of letters. While no state party was omitted, none was unduly 
prominent.* 

It is needless to add that during the whole course of the proced- 
ure it received the continual and warm support of the press. The 
theme was one which suggested the eloquence it received. At the 
public meeting, after the Duke of Cambridge, the venerable Lord 
Lansdowne, Sir John Pakington (Lord Hampton), Monckton Milnes 
(Lord Houghton), Lord Stanley (Earl of Derby), the Lord May- 
or, Lord Goderich (Marquis of Ripon), the Rev. Dr. Cumming, 
and the Chaplain-General (Dr. Gleig), spoke eloquently. But the 

* " The committee was so constituted as ' to represent, as far as possible, all 
classes and professions, irrespective of religious or politicial opinions ; ' a Finance 
Committee was appointed, and the honorary secretaries under the directions of the 
committee, aided by a secretary and accountant, at once commenced their labors." 
— Report, June 20, 1857. 

" The Provisional Committee contains not only many eminent names, but 
names of eminence representing the various classes, professions, and opinions, the 
aggregate of which constitutes English society. It is a very fair specimen of what 
used to be called virtual representation — the object, in this instance, being to repre- 
sent, not a party of sectional interest, but the entire nation ; and true it is that 
the nation has a feeling — a deep and general feeling — about Florence Nightingale, 
which requires expression, and that in something more than mere words." — Satur- 
day Review, November 30, 1855. 



THE NIGHTINGALE FUND. 



265 



most touching incident of the day was this : Mr. Sidney Herbert 
read a letter ; it was a letter from a private soldier who lay wounded 
in one of the beds : " She would speak to one and to another, and 
nod and smile to many more, but she could not do it to all, you 
know, for we lay there by hundreds ; but we could kiss her shadow 
as it fell, and lay our heads on the pillow again content." That 
passage from that letter brought ^10,000 to the fund.* 

And so we set to work. Public meetings in aid were held in all 
the principal cities and towns of the kingdom (the mayors in nearly 
all instances presiding) and in all the dependencies of the Crown, in- 
cluding the East Indies ; including, also, China. Very many clergy- 
men of the Established Church and Nonconformists made collections 

* " To afford further information to the public of the particulars of this sub- 
scription, the honorary secretaries furnish the following more detailed statement : 

" GENERAL ABSTRACT OF SUBSCRIPTIONS. 
" From troops of all arms in various parts of the world, in- 
cluding the militia ....... £8,952 1 7 

From the officers and men of sixty-one ships of her Maj- 
esty's Navy 758 19 8 

From the officers and men of the Coast-Guard service, 

thirty-nine stations . . . . . . . 155 9 o 

From the officers and men of her Majesty's dockyards at 

Woolwich and Pembroke . . . . . . 29 6 4 

From East and West Indies, Australia, North America, 

and other British possessions ..... 4,495 15 6 

From British residents in foreign countries, transmitted 

through their respective embassadors, consuls, etc. . 1,647 J 6 10 

From provincial cities and towns, collected and for- 
warded by local committees or honorary secretaries . 5,683 15 4 

From church or parish collections in other towns and 
villages, transmitted by the clergy and ministers of 
various denominations ...... 1,162 4 9 

From merchants, bankers, and others connected with the 
City of London, through the City Auxiliary Com- 
mittee 3,511 13 6 

From other general subscriptions not included under the 
above heads, made up of separate sums, from one 
penny to £500 (yet to be received, £57 os. lid.) . 15,697 14 10 

The contribution of M. and Madame Goldschmidt, being 
the gross proceeds of a concert given by them at 
Exeter Hall 1,872 6 o 

( The expenses of this concert, £547, were defrayed by AI. 
and Madame Goldschmidt.} 

Proceeds of sales of the " Nightingale Address " (a Litho- 
graphic Print and Poem published at " one shilling"}, 
received from Mrs. F. P. B. Martin . . . 53 o o 

Proceeds of a series of " Twelve Photographic Views in 

the Interior of Sebastopol," by G. Shaw Lefevre, Esq. 18 18 o 

_ Total £44,039 1 4 

" It may be anticipated that the gross amount collected will exceed the sum of 
£46,000, including the amount of interest on exchequer bills purchased from time 
to time by the Finance Committee as the funds accumulated." 



266 THE NIGHTINGALE FUND. 

after sermons (I think the several published lists contain the names 
of a thousand such). Among the most cheering helps were the " one 
day's pay of the officers and men " of nearly every regiment in the 
service, and that of the greater number of her Majesty's ships.* 
Scarcely less gratifying were the " collecting-books " in which sub- 
scriptions of small sums were entered. I have before me one such 
book that contains forty names, yet the amount is under two pounds. 
These, in the aggregate, amounted to a large sum. Books were 
opened by many of the principal bankers throughout the kingdom. 
Amateur concerts were frequent, and mightiest of them all was the 
concert given at Exeter Hall on the nth March, 1856, by M. and 
Madame Goldschmidt, which realized a sum approaching ^2,000. f 

The largest portion of the amount came directly, through none 
of these channels. I have never had the curiosity to count the num- 
ber of subscribers ; there were probably more than 80,000, counting 
those in the local lists, those enumerated in the army and navy lists, 
and the books of small subscribers. Twelve long lists were pub- 
lished from time to time in the daily papers, and it surprised few to 
learn that the sum total of the whole exceeded ^48,000, approaching 
very nearly to that I was sanguine enough to hope for, and indeed 
expect, when I had my first interview with Sidney Herbert. It would 
have been full that sum, but that, at the earnest entreaty of Miss 
Nightingale, the movement was suddenly brought to a close. Her 
reason for that (and the acquiescence of the Committee) was this : 

* The following passage occurs in a report of the Committee to the subscribers 
and the public ; it is dated June 20, 1857: 

" Subscriptions have been received from all classes of her Majesty's subjects at 
home and abroad : from members of the royal family ; from the nobility and gen- 
try ; from the clergy and ministers of various persuasions ; and from the public 
generally. The merchants, bankers, and others connected with the City of London, 
through their auxiliary committee, contributed a sum of £3,511 13^. td. ; and vari- 
ous provincial cities and towns have remitted £5,683 15J. a,d. Meetings have been 
also held in India, and in nearly all the Colonies, and subscriptions of £4,495 15^. 6d. 
have been collected from them ; including £1,300 from Calcutta, £1,628 from Vic- 
toria, and £451 from New South Wales. Collections have also been made in 
churches and chapels ; local committees were furnished with collecting-books, 
which have been returned with remittances amounting to £2,000, contributed chiefly 
by subscribers of very small sums, evincing that a deep and earnest feeling of ' ap- 
preciating gratitude ' toward Miss Nightingale was as strongly felt by the working 
classes as by the higher orders." 

f The expenses were heavy, but the gross receipts of the concert were paid into 
the fund — without any deduction whatever. The Committee protested against such 
liberality : but vainly strove to persuade M. and Madame Goldschmidt to deduct 
the large sum they had themselves to pay. Mr. Mitchell, the agent for "getting 
up " the concert came, at their request, before the Committee and stated that he 
was positively forbidden to hold back a single shilling to pay the costs. The whole 
of the receipts of the concert were paid into the fund. The course they adopted 
(though by no means a solitary instance of their liberality) needs no comment from 
me. M. Goldschmidt did — yet even that was not managed without difficulty — ac- 
cept a marble bust of the Queen, executed by Joseph Durham : but its cost was not 
suffered to come out of the fund. It was the result of a private subscription. 



THE NIGHTINGALE FUND. 



267 



the frightful inundations in France in the year 1857 had excited deep 
and sad interest in this country, and to relieve the sufferers there 
was a strong movement in England — several cities and towns arrang- 
ing meetings with that view. It was to aid this movement that Miss 
Nightingale desired a stop might be put to the continuation of the 
Nightingale Fund, and it was stopped accordingly. The Nightingale 
Fund is now working out much of what it was desired to do. In the 
seven palaces that grace the southern bank of the Thames, in full 
view of the Houses of Parliament, nurses are trained for the great 
work of mercy. 

A committee still labors, the chairman being the honored gentle- 
man Sir Harry Verney, whose estimable lady (her works hold high 
rank in literature, and have been dictated by the guiding influence of 
love and mercy) is the sister of Florence Nightingale. 

She, who is not long past the prime of life, directs the movement, 
controls the progress, and by the exercise of wise experience carries 
out the project originated and, in a degree, perfected, in 1855. God 
grant to her health and strength to continue the work she commenced 
twenty-eight years ago in the hospitals at Scutari and in the Crimea ! 

I have some of the many works published by Miss Nightingale — 
" Notes on Hospitals," " Notes on Nursing," etc., etc. They have 
added to the debt due to her on the part of all who are interested in 
the great cause of humanity.* 

This subject has occupied, perhaps, too much space in my Recol- 
lections, but no history of the movement has hitherto appeared, and 
certainly none could appear except from me. I have, therefore, 
thought my memory might be a contribution to an interesting his- 
tory ; and I hope I need not apologize for its length. There is, how- 
ever, one matter I think I am bound not to omit. I did not visit 
the committee-room for the last time without receiving a very strong 
testimony to my services on the part of the Committee, expressed not 
only in words, but in writing, the spokesman being the chairman of 
the Financial Committee, Lord Monteagle. That of Mr. Sidney 
Herbert I received previously and subsequently. I think it is my 
right to add that when that most estimable gentleman died I lost a 
friend. 

* I copy a passage from the latest report of the Nightingale Fund, 1S81 : 
" Good women are wanted for this work, but especially gentlewomen of sound 
health, firm purpose, cultivated minds ; practical ; apt to learn, willing to obey, to 
render to Caesar his dues ; when the time comes, able to organize and rule with an 
eye to the good of the cause, in sympathy with those over them as well as those 
under them — large-minded, large-hearted. 

" We want gentlewomen who are conscious that they were sent into the world 
for something more than the pursuit of their own gratification, and who feel life is 
not worth living unless they strive to make the world something better for their 
having lived in it." 



RECOLLECTIONS 
OF THE REV. THEOBALD MATHEW. 

Father Mathew * was a Franciscan friar ; he has been justly 
called " the Apostle of Temperance," and may be as truly termed its 
" Martyr." f 

I loved the good man and I honor his memory. 

Before I trace his career and convey an idea of the work he did, I 
desire to say something concerning Ireland, as I knew it so far back as 
1816. My family was then located in Cork ; and my father, Colonel 
Hall, was working copper-mines (which indeed he discovered as well 
as worked) in the parish of Scull, about eight miles west from Skib- 
bereen, and forty from " the beautiful city." [I shall have to return 
to this part of my theme.] 

I believe I can make the subject interesting ; those who are en- 
abled from actual knowledge to do so, are daily becoming fewer and 
fewer. Very few indeed even now remain of the contemporaries of 
Fathew Mathew who were also his friends. 

The priests of the early part of the century were liberal gentle- 
men ; graduating, as most of them did, at St. Omer, prior to the 
French Revolution, they had mixed with enlightened savants j their 
profession inferred no exclusion from society in France ; their habits 
and conversation were generally refined : they were, in a word, though 
for the most part peasant-born, educated gentlemen ; shamefully and 
wickedly oppressed, even then, by the bad relics of the Penal Laws, 
which many of them lived to see erased from the statute-books. 
They differed essentially from the present race of priests who are 
trained at Maynooth — the Roman Catholic University founded in 

* Few great men have been more fortunate than was Father Mathew in a biog- 
rapher. His life, by John Francis Maguire, M. P. for Cork, who died a compara- 
tively young man, is a work of rare excellence — charitable, discriminating, just ; the 
author was a zealous Roman Catholic, but no trace of bigotry or intolerance is 
shown in his book. It is as if the spirit of the good priest inspired the writer of his 
life : considerate charity is its pervading principle. 

f Fathew Mathew was a Capuchin. The Capuchins are a branch of the Fran- 
ciscan order, and are so called from a little hood (capucino) they wear. 



THE OLD PRIESTS. 269 

1795, ano "> f° r man y years, aided by an annual grant from the Con- 
solidated Fund. 

It was an unhappy event when it was so founded — under the er- 
roneous idea that republican principles were propagated and " en- 
dowed " by intercourse with France. The young men, generally of 
low grade, and seldom of gentle birth, are nourished there in bigotry 
and intolerance — in intense hatred of Protestantism and England.* 
Consequently the priest of the parish is rarely met at tables of the 
gentry ; not often, in truth, at the tables of Roman Catholic gen- 
try : and is condemned to associate almost solely with his own 
caste. That this is to be deplored, none will doubt : it helps very 
largely to prevent the assimilation that can not fail to benefit both 
castes, without which, indeed, amicable intercourse between the two 
races is impossible. That it was not always so is certain. When 
the Roman Catholics of Ireland were really oppressed, excluded from 
civil rights, and treated rather as conquered slaves than a free people 
(as I shall elsewhere show), the priests were far less hostile to Prot- 
estants and Englishmen than they have been since the Catholic 
Emancipation Act of 1829. 

They were a pleasant, almost a "jolly," class — the priests of the 
old regime. Drunkenness was considered an institution ; whisky was 
the " friend of the clergy," and the priest generally its patron : but 
so were, far too often, the clergymen of the Established — and then 
dominant — Church. 

I might depict several such examples of the order. The parish 
of Ballydehob, for example, was gifted with one — Father O'Shea, who, 
I have no doubt, did his duty by his flock ; but he loved " the drop " 
as well as they did ; when he breakfasted with us, it was a thing well 
understood that the whisky-bottle had a place beside the tea-pot. 

On one occasion we lost a saddle. The fact was forthwith com- 
municated to Father O'Shea. " I'll get back the saddle," he said, ad- 
dressing my brother and me ; " come to mass next Sunday, and I'll 
show ye how I'll get it." So to mass we went ; when service was 
ended the priest addressed his congregation thus : "Boys, I've some- 
thing to say to ye before ye go. There's a good man that's doing ye 
a dale of service, one Colonel Hall — ye know him. Well, he's lost a 
saddle ; let it be at his door before he wakes to-morrow morning, or, 
if it isn't, the man that stole that saddle, before this day week, will be rid- 
ing upon that same saddle through hell ! " With the dawn of the morn- 
ing the saddle was on the doorstep. The power of the priest in those 
days was much more absolute than it is at present. He did things 
that he would not now dare to do. I have seen the little weak padre 
of Ballydehob stand at the door of a shebeen-shop, order out a lot of 

* Theobald Mathew was educated at Maynooth — partly, that is to say, for he 
left the college in 1808. He had given a convivial party in his rooms : an un- 
pardonable offense, and he resigned to avoid expulsion. 



270 



THE OLD PRIESTS. 



stalwart fellows who were making "bastes" of themselves inside, and 
horsewhip each, as he made a rush from the door into the road- 
way.* 

Of at least as original a character was Father Mat Horgan, of 
Blarney. Many writers have had something to say concerning the 
good priest. He was a learned Irish scholar ; a somewhat wild 
poem of his, in Irish, on the subject of " Round Towers," graces 
Mrs. Hall's album. Father Mat was proud of intercourse with con- 
spicuous literary men and women, and so hospitable that he never 
saw an end to giving. During our visit to Cork in 1840, he arranged 
for us a reception in the ' ; Groves of Blarney." After we had seen 
" the sweet purling brooks," the " statues gracing that noble place 
in," and " the stone that no one misses," we were entertained at sup- 
per. The good priest never had a shilling to spend : so his custom 
was, when strangers were his expected guests, to levy contributions 
on his neighbors. Whether on this occasion a spur was put on the 
heel of his intent, or our name was familiar, as " much associate " 
with Cork, I can not say, but the call was entirely successful. On 
the supper-table were placed seven boiled legs of mutton, with a vast 
accumulation of et cceteras, and the whisky-punch was ladled out of 
a milk-churn. A barn had been fitted up with tables to contain a 
hundred guests : the seats were full ; the walls were hung with ever- 
greens and flowers, and of course the Cead-mille-fealtha — "a 
hundred thousand welcomes " — stretched from one end to the other 
of the feasting-hall. Well, it is a pleasant memory, that which is 
linked with the genial, generous, priest of Blarney, kindly Father 
Mat. 

Mrs. Hall preserved a memory of another priest, whom she re- 
garded, in her childhood, with respect and affection — good Father 
Murphy, of her native Bannow, in Wexford County. He was a rebel, 
perhaps — I will not quite say, and so he ought to have been at the 
close of the last century ; f but in his parish, during the Rebellion, 

* At a recent Tipperary election, the magistrate had given strict orders to the 
police not to allow a voter to pass a barrier " wid his stick in his fist." Much in- 
dignation was expressed ; the men wanted to vote, but would not give up the shil- 
lalah. What was to be done ? After a delay and debate, the priest was seen 
riding toward the hustings, so the grievance was told to him by a hundred voices. 
His reverence was puzzled. To advise the abandonment of their weapons was to 
insure unpopularity ; yet it was dangerous to counsel his flock to defy the law. 
After a reflective pause, he said : " Well, boys, don't give up your sticks, keep them 
by all manner o' manes ; but use them paceably," and rode on, out of sight. 

f It is said that Sir John Moore — he of Corunna — witnessing the oppression to 
which the Irish were subjected, exclaimed, " If I were an Irishman I would be a 
rebel !" It may not be forgotten that all the influential leaders in 1798 were Prot- 
estants, from Lord Edward Fitzgerald and the brothers Sheares in Dublin to the 
three unhappy gentlemen who died on the scaffold at Wexford ; so it was with the 
brothers Emmet in 1805 ; so it was with those of 1S48 — O'Brien, Mitchel, and 
Martin were Protestants — and so it is to-day. The present " chief," who has a 
large " following," is a Protestant. It is undeniable — indeed.it has never been 



MAYNOOTH. 



271 



not a single drop of Protestant blood was shed, although it was not 
far from Ross on the one side, and Vinegar Hill on the other, and 
but a few miles distant from the Barn of Scullabogue. 

I have said, the ostensible object in founding Maynooth College 
— on the part of those who acquired and those who accorded the 
privilege, for as such it was received and acknowledged — was to 
avert by home-education the evils likely to arise to Great Britain 
from committing the charge of instructing teachers of a large num- 
ber of British subjects, to foreign enemies of the state. Thus, on 
the one side, ancient prejudices were abandoned, apprehensions were 
lulled, suspicion was relinquished, and public money to advance the 
project was granted. As a set-off against these sacrifices it was ex- 
pected, and very reasonably, that the Roman Catholic clergymen, 
placed beyond the reach of influence prejudicial to the kingdom, 
and grateful for that which, if it was a right, was also a boon (for 
there was power to withhold, and none to obtain it), would become 
with their flocks more attached to British government, more eager 
to advance British interests, and more entirely and emphatically of 
the British people. 

This most desirable object has not been achieved. On the con- 
trary, the race of young men who leave Maynooth to discharge their 
parochial duties throughout Ireland are more hostile to the British 
Government than were the priests of the old school, who received 
their education in France, Italy, and Spain. Before the Union, and, 
indeed, for some years after it, the parish priest was generally a well- 
informed, and frequently an accomplished gentleman ; abroad he 
had enjoyed opportunities of cultivating intellectual and refined so- 
ciety, from which at home he would have been excluded ; abroad, his 
humble birth and paucity of means had been no barriers against his 
introduction among classes which, at home, would have rejected him ; 
abroad, instead of his observations and experiences being limited 
to grades either on a par with or below him, his position and purpose 
elevated him to higher ranks, in whose habit of thinking and acting 
he, therefore, gradually and naturally, partook ; and on his return 
to discharge his sacred duties in his own country he almost invaria- 
bly brought with him a knowledge of the world, some acquaintance 
with all " universal " topics, a polished demeanor, a relish for " good 
society," an improved taste, and an appreciation of the refinements 
and delicacies of life. The natural consequence followed : he was 
often the friend, and usually the associate, of his Protestant neigh- 
bors, at whose houses it was a very common occurrence to place a 
knife and fork every day for the priest. I have personally known 
many such as I describe — benevolent, courteous, and charitable gen- 
denied — that with the burning at Scullabogue and the butcheries on the bridge at 
Wexford, the Protestants found it was to be a war not for Liberty but for, so-called, 
Religion. 



272 



THE MAYNOOTH PRIEST. 



tlemen whose society was an acquisition, whose counsel was fre- 
quently useful, and whose efforts were constantly exerted to main- 
tain, for the advantage of both, the relations between the landlord 
and the tenant. The Maynooth priest is of another stamp. Gen- 
erally, I may, perhaps, say almost invariably, he is of very humble 
birth and connections ; his school fees and college expenses are 
liquidated by contributions among his relatives ; being at his outset 
utterly ignorant of society of a better order than his native village 
supplied, and having, as matter of course, contracted the habits of 
those among whom his boyhood was passed, reading not to enlarge 
his mind, but to confirm his narrow views of mankind, he enters the 
college, where he mixes exclusively with persons under precisely 
similar circumstances. Here, it is not unreasonable to believe, all 
that is objectionable in his previous habits and education is strength- 
ened rather than removed. His intercourse with his fellow-men is 
limited entirely to residents within the walls of his college ; his stud- 
ies extend no further than to the books authorized by his Church ; 
and during the annual recess (if, indeed, he avail himself of it) he 
returns to the locality from which he came, having seen no more of 
the great world, and the vast varieties of character that people it, than 
he had encountered between his native village and the college-gates. 
The evil working of such a system must be obvious to all. Its effect 
is inevitably to contract the mind, to impede the current of human 
sympathy, to chill the sources of charity, to stimulate intolerance, to 
nourish ignorance and self-sufficiency, and to confirm, if not to pro- 
duce, bigotry. That there are many honorable exceptions to this 
rule is certain, but it holds good far too extensively, and would apply 
with equal strength to the members of any other religion — so edu- 
cated. Under such circumstances, then, the student is sent from 
his college to his parish ; his profession has placed him in the station 
of a gentleman, but he is seldom able to advance any other claim to 
the distinction ; and this is too generally considered an insufficient 
one by his Protestant neighbors, and even by the more aristocratic 
members of his own flock. No opportunities have been afforded 
him of cultivating the thoughts and habits essential to obtain a place 
in general society ; his education has added to, rather than lessened, 
his disqualifications. It follows, as matter of course, that his sym- 
pathies, as well as his interests, are all with the lower classes, and he 
labors to mold them to his own views and for his own purposes. He 
is employed wherever and whenever occasion offers, or is found, in 
describing the policy of England toward Ireland as cruel, exacting, 
and oppressive, as being in the nineteenth precisely the same as it 
was in the seventeenth century. The Protestant and the oppressor, 
the Englishman and the enemy of Ireland are, according to his 
interpretation, synonymous terms ; and thus he succeeds in keeping 
alive that system of agitation which, like the perpetual motion of a 
whirlpool, permits nothing to settle within reach of its influence. 



THE PENAL LAWS. 273 

The assumption of a moderate and generous tone regarding Ireland 
is treated as a heinous offense, and excites more bitterness and hos- 
tility than do the most ultra and intolerant principles ; for, unless 
moderation and generosity are made to appear " hypocrisy," the trade 
of the agitator would fail. The attempt to steer a middle course be- 
tween parties too frequently engenders hatred, and is met by abuse. 

It is at least a question whether the impaired or abrogated power 
of the priests to survey the habits and direct the opinions and rule 
the conduct of their flocks is a boon or an evil to the country. For 
myself, I deem it the latter, as regards men as well as women. The 
subject is too large to be entered upon here. I was present when a 
little girl was examined in court by a judge to test whether he might 
accept the evidence, on oath, of one so young. " Little girl," he 
said, " do you know where you'll go to if you tell a lie ? " The child 
hesitated for a moment and then answered, " Troth, yer honor, I'll 
go to Father Mollowney ! " It would not be difficult to fill a score 
of pages with comments on that text ! 

The Penal Laws. — In treating of the Irish Priesthood, and 
the hostile attitude the majority of the Roman Catholic clergy have, 
of late years, assumed, as regards England and British rule, it is a 
natural sequence to consider the Penal Laws by which they were so 
long oppressed and so far as possible degraded. I may not have so 
good an opportunity of doing so as I find presented to me here. My 
object, however, is to show that not a shred of them remained, as an 
oppressor, after the middle of the nineteenth century. The Roman 
Catholic priest is as thoroughly his own master as the clergyman of 
the Established Church : " Envy, hatred, and malice, and all unchari- 
tableness," are sins that can not now be forgiven in a minister of 
Christ. 

That it was otherwise in the Past, will be clear to those who read 
the chapter thus headed — The Penal Laws — bearing in mind, 
however, that when the Roman Catholics were the victims of a wicked 
as well as impolitic system of oppression, so were the Protestant dis- 
senters — notably, so were the Jews. Persecution for righteousness' 
sake was the universal curse of the ages gone. 

To comment on the persecution to which the Scottish Cove- 
nanters were subjected — less than two hundred years ago — would 
be uselessly to quote history. 

My purpose is thus to contrast the condition of Ireland in the 
Present with Ireland in the Past ! 

The " past " being now, at its nearest date, fifty-four years re- 
moved from us ! 

Sixty years ago the Roman Catholics had really no Press : few 
of the common people could read ; and those who could were rather 



274 



THE PENAL LAWS. 



alarmed by, than inclined to support, that Shibboleth of the Constitu- 
tion. At the time of the Union — 1800 — there were seven newspapers 
published in Dublin, and in the whole Island besides only eighteen. 
The Press of the whole kingdom was fettered ; but the fetters espe- 
cially " wrung the withers " of those who wished evil to the dominant 
faith, and could not but think it the highest duty to stand by the 
oppressed against the oppressor. 

Sixty years ago, half a dozen newspapers represented the inter- 
ests of the Roman Catholic part of the population, which, in Ireland, 
was then seven times greater than the Protestant. 

Sixty years ago, there were many living who had been sufferers 
from the effects of the Penal Laws ; and not a few who had been, in 
1798, participators in the Rebellion. 

The Penal Laws, although some of the worst of the infamous en- 
actments had been abrogated, were still operative against every class 
and order of the Roman Catholic community. It is requisite that I, 
to some extent, review them as reasons for, and certainly causes of, 
most of the calamities under which Ireland, and consequently Eng- 
land, has long suffered and is still suffering. 

My purpose is to show that if then there were excuses to God and 
to man for disaffection, for hatred of England — in a word, for Rebel- 
lion — there are no such excuses now. 

The "boons" may have been accorded from fear, ungraciously 
given to be ungratefully received ; but the old laws exist only in tra- 
dition, in memory, and in the Statute-Books of which they had been 
foul blots for centuries. 

I proceed to show how much reason Ireland has, and has long 
had, to rest and be thankful ; to acknowledge that if past laws were 
iniquitous and unbearable, existing laws are not only tolerant but 
equitable ; and that justice to Ireland, whether free or forced, has 
been the policy of repentant England since almost the commence- 
ment of the nineteenth century ; a brief survey will suffice. I need 
not go so far back as the time when " intermarriage with the Irish, 
or fostering with the Irish, was made treason " ; when priests were 
hanged who were caught teaching the word of God as their con- 
science bade them teach it : when no Papist could ride a horse, the 
worth of which was more than five pounds ; * when any Papist might 
have been deprived of his estate by any one of his sons who became 
an " apostate " ; not even so far back as the time when no Papist 
could command a regiment or a ship, when (I borrow a passage from 
the Life of Philpot, Bishop of Exeter) " Popish priests who should 

* By the 7th William III Roman Catholics were disabled from having or keep- 
ing a horse exceeding five pounds in value. There was and probably is now to be 
seen in the ruins of Kilcrea Abbey the grave of an O'Leary. He had won in a 
race a wager of a Mr. Morris, who tendered him that sum on the race-course with 
the insulting words, " Papist, five pounds for your horse." 



LA WS AGAINST PAPISTS. 



275 



officiate in Romish churches or chapels were declared guilty of fel- 
ony, if foreigners, and high treason if natives.* Rewards were pay- 
able on discovery of Popish clergy : ^50 for discovery of a bishop ; 
^20 for a priest, and ^10 for a Popish usher. No Protestant was 
allowed to marry a Papist. No Papist could purchase land, or take 
a lease for more than thirty-one years." No Papist could be in a 
line of entail : but the estate was to pass on to the next Protestant 
relation. No Papist could hold any office, civil or military, or dwell 
in certain specified towns, or vote at elections. The story is well 
known — that of a placard posted on the gates of Bandon containing 
this distich : 

" Enter here Jew, Turk, or Atheist, 
Anybody but a Papist." 

Under which is said to have been written : 

" Whoever wrote this, wrote it well, 
The same is written on the gates of hell ! " 

The juries were to be exclusively Protestant. Papists in towns were 
to provide Protestant watchmen, and were incapacitated from voting 
at vestries. They were also incapable of being called to the bar ; 
and barristers or solicitors marrying Papists were considered Papists, 
and were liable to all the consequent penalties. Any priest found 
guilty of celebrating a marriage between a Protestant and a Roman 
Catholic was to be hanged. 

So late as 1782, Catholics were forbidden to carry arms. The 
famous volunteers of that remarkable era, numbering 130,000, were 
exclusively Protestants, or at all events so " in theory," although 
Catholic money sustained that body and gave it strength ; while the 
officers, including Lord Charlemont, Commander-in-Chief, the Duke 
of Leinster, and Henry Grattan, were, of course, all Protestants, a 
Bishop (the Bishop of Derry) being among the most prominent of 
their armed leaders. 

Sixty years ago the " disqualifications " were little less numerous 
and heavy than they had been early in the eighteenth century. The 
penal laws had been planted deeply in the soil ; the roots were not 
extracted ; the fruit they still bore was yet bitter to the taste and 

* It was said by one of the speakers at a meeting of the Catholic Temperance 
League in 1879, that " twenty years ago, the effigy of a cardinal would have been 
burnt on Tower Hill, where Cardinal Manning had addressed 20,000 Irish Catho- 
lics in the open air." He might have added that sixty years ago the Cardinal, if 
he had appeared there in his robes (which he would not have dared to do), would 
have risked more than a chance of being burnt — not in effigy, but in the body ; at 
least, an infuriated anti-papist mob would, of a surety, have torn into shreds his red 
stockings and red hat, and have left their victim to be carried to the nearest hos- 
pital. The very young among us can remember how the outer semblance of such 
a man fed a bonfire on the " glorious" fifth of November, when the word " Re- 
member, remember " was hooted by a mob that construed religion into a mandate 
to persecute. 



276 PROTESTANT OPPRESSORS. 

poisonous to the mind and soul. To some of such as remained, it 
will be necessary for my purpose to refer in order that I may de- 
scribe Ireland as I knew it in 1816, and contrast it with Ireland as 
it is in 1882. 

Sixty years ago, a Roman Catholic could not be an exciseman or 
a parish constable, or possess any office that inferred responsibility 
and trust ; every avenue to distinction was closed against him ; he 
could practice at the bar (having kept certain terms in England), 
but he could not be a king's counsel or a sergeant-at-law, much less 
sit on the bench as a judge. We have lived to see eight of the twelve 
judges Roman Catholics, the Chief Baron of the Exchequer, the 
Chief Justices of the Queen's Bench and the Common Pleas, Roman 
Catholics, and a Roman Catholic the Lord High Chancellor of 
Ireland. Nay, a Roman Catholic and an Irishman has been 
one of the English judges ; nay, four other Roman Catholics 
have had, or have, seats on the English Bench : and one of those 
who now holds that high office is a nephew of the Rev. Theobald 
Mathew ! 

Only so recently as 1778 did the penal laws begin to be relaxed ; 
they were modified in 1782 (when the threats of Irish volunteers 
were heard at St. James's), and still further when in 1793 the tocsin 
of the French Revolution was heard — terrifying all humanity. 

The corporations of Ireland were entirely and exclusively Prot- 
estant. Less than fifty years ago there was not a single Roman 
Catholic in any, or but in one — the exception to the rule — Mr. Bryan, 
of Kilkenny, was a Catholic. Be it for good or evil, it is not for me 
to say : four fifths of the corporate bodies are Catholics, while the 
Mayors of the cities and towns are in like proportion. 

In Cork there were, on the Grand Parade (the principal street of 
the city), two club-houses that, on the 1st July, to commemorate the 
battle of the Boyne, were illuminated from attic to cellar. Troops 
of boys were letting off squibs and crackers ; and, decked for the 
nonce, with orange-flowers and orange ribbons, was a dilapidated 
equestrian statue, said to be that of King William the Third, of 
" glorious and immortal memory, who saved us from slavery, popery, 
and wooden shoes," but really that of the second Charles, round 
which was gathered a turbulent assembly, " drunk and disorderly," 
to remind the nine tenths of their fellow-citizens that they were 
slaves. On the evening of that day no respectable Roman Catholic 
was seen in the street ; but on its outskirts threats and curses were 
very audible. 

" A hundred years ago " (I borrow from Lord O'Hagan) " the Irish 
Catholic was worse than a serf in his own land. In his person all human 
rights were trampled down, all human feelings outraged. He was denied 
the common privilege of self-defense ; he was incapable of holding property 
like other men ; he was forbidden to instruct his own children ; and a wicked 
and immoral law tempted his brothers to defraud him, and robbed him that 



OTHER OPPRESSORS. 



277 



it might reward the apostasy of his ungrateful son. Since time began a sys- 
tem more atrocious was never devised to crush the human conscience." 

The " system " was characterized by Edmund Burke : 

" It was a system of wise and elaborate contrivance, as well fitted for the 
oppression and degradation of a people, and the debasement in them of 
human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man." 

It must not be forgotten that Irish Protestants were in the peril- 
ous position of a small minority surrounded by a vast majority, hos- 
tile by blood, hereditary hatreds, and religion ; England regarded 
Ireland as a conquered country, always in a state of inchoate rebel- 
lion, to be governed and kept down by an arm of borrowed strength 
that ever carried the sword without the scabbard.* 

In fact, to keep in subjection those who were enemies was the 
universal law of all countries — has been so in all ages. To perse- 
cute " for the love of God " was a religion in old times ; yet not so 
long ago, but that men comparatively young can recall the dismal 
truth. England set the glorious example of toleration : the Catho- 
lics were relieved first, the Protestant Dissenters next, the Jews last ; 
the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts quickly followed Roman 
Catholic emancipation, and while down to a recent period no British- 
born Jew could hold land or sit in Parliament, nor hold any state or 
corporate office, we have seen a Jew the Master of the Rolls in Eng- 
land. Not long ago, a Jew was Lord Mayor of London. Many 
Jews are representatives of the British people in the House of Com- 
mons sharing with the Dissenters and Roman Catholics equal rights 
with members of the Church as by law established. 

I conclude this branch of my subject by quoting a passage from 
a speech of Sir Robert Peel, addressing the House after the passing 
of the Relief Bill : 

" God grant that the moral storm may be appeased ; that the 
turbid waters of strife may be settled and composed ; and that, after 

* " It is conveniently forgotten by Catholic declaimers against the iniquity of the 
penal laws that in Catholic countries the laws against Protestants were more severe 
than any code which either England or any other Protestant country has enforced 
against Catholics. In Spain and Italy there was no liberty of religion ; in France 
it had been withdrawn by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. 

" The existence in those countries of Protestant communities was held incon- 
sistent with the safety of the State. Nonconformists were imprisoned, exiled, de- 
prived of their estates, or put to death. Neither schools nor churches were allowed 
to them to teach their creeds in ; not so much as six feet of ground in which their 
bodies might rest when dead, if they died out of communion with ' the Church.' 
Catholic writers express neither regret nor astonishment at these severities, and 
reserve their outcries for occasions when they are themselves the victims of their 
own principles. They consider that they are right and that Protestants are wrong ; 
that, in consequence, when Protestants persecute Catholics it is an act of wicked- 
ness, when Catholics persecute Protestants it is an act of lawful authority." — 
Froude. 



278 ROMAN CATHOLIC CHAPELS. 

having found their just level, they may be mingled with equal flow 
in one clear and common stream. But if these expectations were to 
be disappointed ; if, unhappily, civil strife and contention shall sur- 
vive the restoration of political privilege ; if there really be some- 
thing inherent in the spirit of the Roman Catholic religion which 
disdains equality, and will be contented with nothing but ascendency 
— still am I contented to run the hazard of the change. The con- 
test, if it be inevitable, will be fought with other objects and with 
other arms. 

" The struggle will then be, not for the abolition of civil distinc- 
tions, but for the predominance of an intolerant religion." 

Let me describe the Roman Catholic chapels sixty years ago — 
Churches they were never called ; they had the same title as the 
houses of the Methodists and Dissenters ; it was another sign of 
servitude ; " mass-houses " they were often termed, in order to make 
more manifest their degradation. The chapel was usually a long, 
narrow, whitewashed building, that did little more than afford shelter 
from the weather ; all external signs of grace were illegal, and as it 
was illegal to ring a bell to call a congregation to prayer, there were, 
of course, no belfries. The priest wore no ecclesiastical habit ; he 
did not dare to celebrate the rites of burial at the grave of any mem- 
ber of his flock. 

There was no way of building or keeping in repair a Roman 
Catholic chapel except by the free contributions of poor congrega- 
tions — ninety-nine out of every hundred not having a shilling to give. 
Consequently a chapel was rarely finished all at once — it had to be 
completed bit by bit ; and I am within the mark in stating that 
often the painting and plastering within — such as it was — con- 
tinued for a quarter of a century in the condition in which it was 
when the roof was placed over the building, all efforts of the priest 
to finish it being unavailable, his parish being really unable to do 
the work. 

No Roman Catholic clergyman was officially attached to any 
jail ; he was not permitted to enter one to teach. Not that only ; 
if he desired to administer the rites of his religion to a dying pris- 
oner, it had to be done in secret and by stealth.* 

The interior of the chapel, which resembled a big barn, was as 
naked as the exterior. The walls were occasionally whitewashed, 
the flooring was usually of clay, there was rarely a Communion serv- 
ice, and the altar was covered with soiled altar-cloths. Often there 
were broken window-panes in the windows, which were seldom or 
never cleaned ; a few chairs and stools were scattered here and 

* So late as 1811 the Commander-in-chief, the Duke of York, issued an order 
that "no Roman Catholic soldier shall be punished for not attending divine service 
of the Church of England." 



TITHES. 2 7q 

there ; an atmosphere of gloom and a scent of mildew prevailed in- 
variably. 

The priest's house differed little from the cabin, except that it 
was slated and had two floors.* The priest's " board " was on a par 
with his lodging ; it was always meager fare, eked out sometimes by 
eggs, a spring chicken, or a ham — gifts from some thoughtful farmer. 
His dues were necessities, exacted often with indecent rigor, and 
sometimes with threats, not of punishment here (such a threat 
would have been a mockery), but of condemnation hereafter. In 
short, his condition was but a remove from sordid poverty, of which 
he was perpetually reminded by the cozy and comfortable Rectory 
close at hand, where the clergyman lived in comparative luxury on 
an income derived from the flock of the priest, f 

Payment of tithes, the most intolerable of all burdens, was long 
ago abolished. It would be difficult to overestimate the importance 
and value of that relief. Much less than sixty years ago, it seemed 
to paralyze the whole body politic ; it was an unbearable malady, 
great in reality, but greater as a badge of serfdom. The evils to 
which it led are sufficiently notorious. Those who are not old can 
recall them to memory. It will suffice to make a note of this change 
as I proceed. Many of my readers will recollect the tithe-proctors, 
men who, under the sanction of an evil law — foul residue of the 
penal laws — often took from the poor man all he had, to pay a cler- 
gyman he contemned, and sustain a Church for which he had he- 
reditary abhorrence. I have seen the whole of a cotter's substance 
"canted " to pay a "debt" that was originally but a few shillings — 
swelled by "costs" into pounds. I once paid half a crown to re- 
deem the household gods of a family ; they consisted of a table, two 
broken chairs, a " kish," and a mattress : but they were their all. 
That grievance, in form and in substance, was swept away long 

* So it was in Scotland little more than a century ago. Take the evidence of 
Sir Walter Scott : " Of the clergyman's house we need only say that it formed no 
exception to the general rule by which the landed proprietors of Scotland seemed 
to proceed in lodging the clergy, not only in the cheapest, but in the ugliest and 
most inconvenient house which the genius of masonry could contrive. . . . To 
complete the picture, the clergyman being a bachelor, the pigs had unmolested ad- 
mission to the garden and courtyard." 

f These notes of an address of a priest to his flock after service were taken 
down by a friend of mine and sent to me. Its " like " is to be found in many 
Irish writers : " Paddy Mullins, keep out of the way of the broken pane in the 
window, that you've been promising to mend this year back — the rain will go 
through ye, and may be reach your heart ; and you, Tim Mullowney, a pretty 
stonemason ye are : take care how you cross the chapel doorstep ; you might trip 
and be — well, I won't say where ; but t'would take a hape of prayers to get ye out. 
Thank yon, James Deasy, for the bit you didn't send me of the pig you killed last 
Wednesday ; and you, Molly Devereux — and it's a lone widdy ye are — for the 
goose-egg you didn't bring me. Jerry Mahon, have you thrashed the trifle of oats 
in the two acre ? The gray mare of your clergy wants to know particularly." 



280 TITHE-SEIZURES. 

ago. [There are many, neither Irish nor Roman Catholic, who 
thank God that it is so.] 

The tithe-proctor was then a member of a " profession " — the 
perpetual leader of a forlorn hope, always in daily fear of a violent 
death. Tithes were to the Irish landlord or farmer — such as were 
Roman Catholics, that is to say — naturally the most obnoxious of all 
taxes. They took from him, to sustain the dominant and hated 
Church, and often the over-rich clergyman, the money that, in his 
view, of right belonged to the poor, ill-clad, and ill-fed priest of his 
parish, who was to him " all in all " in this world and the next. 

If to pay tithes to aid a religion from which there is a conscien- 
cious dissent was odious in England, what must it have been in Ire- 
land, where it was a perpetual reminder of a state of bondage, and 
generally a galling token of oppression — pressure of the chain over 
the sore it had made ! Not unfrequently in a parish there were three 
Protestants and three hundred Roman Catholics to pay the tax, 
and often a living in Ireland meant a large income for doing nothing. 

There were abundant cases of levying for tithes in amount so 
small as a shilling ; there was often nothing to seize in the cabin 
worth a shilling — except the potatoes in the ground.* The impost 
was, indeed, regarded universally as a loathsome badge of servitude : 
and it was actually so. When goods were seized, cattle more espe- 
cially, no one dared to buy them. Plenty of cases are recorded where 

* I was a witness to the scene pictured in this note — a seizure for tithes : it is, 
however, thus recorded by Mrs. S. C. Hall, to whom I related it many years after 
it occurred. But it is by no means to be regarded as fiction. It is as accurately 
delineated as it could have been if she had actually seen it — as I actually did in 
1816. 

" The home-affections were tugging at the peasant's heart. He kept his eyes 
fixed upon the remnants of the furniture of his once-comfortable cottage that were 
dragged out previous to being carried away. He pointed to the potato-kish that 
was placed upon the table — the indispensable article into which the potatoes are 
thrown when boiled, and which frequently, in the wilder and less civilized parts of 
Ireland, is used as a cradle for the ' baby.' 'God bless you !' he exclaimed to the 
man ; ' God bless you, and don't take that ; it's nothing but a kish ; it's not worth 
half a farthing to ye ; it's falling to pieces ; but it's more to me — homeless and 
houseless as I am — than thousands , It's nothing btit a kish ; but my eldest boy — 
he, thank God, that's not to the fore to see his father's poverty this day — he slept 
in it many a long night, when the eyes of his little sister had not gone among the 
bright stars of heaven, but were here to watch over him. It's nothing but a kish ; 
yet many a time little Kathleen crowed, and held up her innocent head out of it to 
kiss her daddy. It's nothing but a kish ; yet many a day, in the midst of ?ny slav- 
ery, have I and my wife, and five as beautiful children as ever stirred a man's 
heart in his bosom, sat round it and eat the praytie and salt out of it, fresh and 
wholesome ; and whin I had my six blessings to look on, it's little I cared for the 
slavery a poor Irishman is born to. It's nothing but a kish ; but it's been with me 
full and it's been with me empty, for many a long year. And it's used to me. It 
knows my throubles ; for since the bed was sowld from under us for the last gale, 
what else had we to keep our heads from the cowld earth ? For the love of the 
Almighty God, have mercy on a poor, weak, houseless man ; don't take the last 
dumb thing he cares for. Sure it's nothing but a kish.' " 



ROMAN CATHOLIC CATHEDRALS. 28 1 

not daring to offer goods, seized in the locality, they were taken 
forty miles away for sale. Even then there would be no bidders ; a 
sale by public auction was imperative ; but woe to the man who 
bought ! A troop of cavalry sometimes protected the auctioneer ; 
they saved him from death, but could not force bidders. Often it 
was a mere choice of evils — to send the cow back to " Norah and 
the childer." 

The business of the " process-server " was at all times one of ex- 
ceeding danger, and those who pursued it were always reckless dare- 
devils, whose only recommendations were cunning and courage. I 
had much talk with one of them in Tipperary. He told me (and I 
believed him) that " he had been five times left for dead, and had 
had half a score of pistol-bullets taken out of his body." He added 
" Even my own mother, on her death-bed, turned her face to the 
wall when I asked her for her blessing." I could quote numerous 
instances to show that the class was universally detested. The 
process-server ranked next to the " approver " in the loathing of the 
Irish people. 

In 1830, before he commenced his mission of temperance, Father 
Mathew, in consequence of the scandals occurring in the churchyard 
of the Cork Cathedral, contrived to purchase the " Botanic Garden " 
— one of the few adornments of that city — and convert it into a 
Catholic burial-ground.* Thenceforward the dead of the two faiths 
were kept asunder ; the Protestant clergy endured loss of fees, and 
the Catholic clergy were permitted to read and say what they pleased 
over a brother or sister departed. 

It is needless to add that now, adjacent to every large town in 
Ireland, there are cemeteries, where the ashes of the two classes — do 
not mingle. In Dublin there is Harold's Cross Cemetery for the 
Protestants, and Glasnevin Cemetery for the Roman Catholics. 

And now in all the cities and large towns of Ireland there are 
Roman Catholic cathedrals ; the churches built of late years are 
examples of the best and most classic church architecture. A priest 
in his vestments is as common a sight as a lawyer in his wig and 
gown ; a bishop is "my lord" on all occasions of public reception, 
and has not unfrequently been made to take precedence of the Prel- 
ate of the state Church. 

I am not called upon either to approve or condemn these 
changes ; my duty is merely to show the marvelous alteration in the 
condition of the Catholic clergy and their churches within the last 
sixty years. 

* I have myself read these lines on a tombstone in the churchyard of the Cork 
Cathedral : 

" Here lies a branch of Desmond's race, 
In Thomas Holland's burial-place." 



282 ILLICIT STILLS. 

It is absolutely necessary to the due performance of my task 
that I should describe Ireland as it was when Father Mathew 
commenced his crusade against the vice that had so long degraded 
the country. 

I have said a little on the subject in recalling " things that have 
been " ; but I must enlarge upon it here. 

Intoxication was the curse of all classes of the community, from 
the highest to the lowest. Whisky was plentiful enough and cheap 
enough, for there was hardly a townland without an illicit still. I 
have seen several of such stills in the mountains about Scull and 
Cape Clear, and I might give vivid sketches of scenes I witnessed in 
connection with them. 

I once passed the night in a miserable shelty — weather-bound ; 
about a score of men and women being there — all wretchedly drunk. 
I remember well what a pandemonium it was, and I recur to it 
with repugnance even now, although it is nearly seventy years 
ago. 

I have a vivid recollection of that hovel. It was imperceptible 
from any distance, the roof being covered with sods of turf and 
heather, so skillfully arranged that they seemed parts of the mountain, 
while the smoke was carried through a tunnel that issued a long way 
off, and was scattered among a picturesque assemblage of rocks. 
It was well known to many, yet the gauger had no idea of the place, 
although well assured that a still was at work in the vicinity. I was 
coursing when I discovered it : the hare suddenly vanished, my 
greyhound followed it, and I followed the greyhound. The rain 
came down in torrents : I was loath to face the terrible storm, so I 
took shelter in the bothy. There was no one to be seen ; the fire 
was out, the still not at work. One person, after a while, arrived, 
then another and another. There was nothing for them to do, ex- 
cept to kill and bury me under a heap of mountain sods, or to let 
me into the secret and confide in my honor. That the distillers did, 
and with them I staid all night (as did many other " guests "), 
until with morning the tempest abated. Of course I partook of the 
" potteen," which was handed round in egg-shells. 

The cost of a private still was not over three pounds. Its seiz- 
ure, therefore, involved no serious loss ; but in fact, not one in fifty 
was seized. Before the advent of Father Mathew, when " Parlia- 
ment whisky " was dear, about a third of the whole of the whisky 
consumed was " potteen." I have seen a private still at the back 
of a waterfall, the smoke being carried away among the foam ; 
and I once saw a still working in the stable of a gentleman of 
rank and fortune : he was brewing the hell-broth only for his 
own use. Frequently the gauger knew the whereabout of a still, 
as well as the name of the distiller ; there were substantial reasons 
why he should keep his eyes shut, independent of the danger, and 
the fact that he' occasionally found a full tub at his hall door. It 



DRUNKENNESS. 



283 



is certain that often a message reached a gang of " the boys " doing 
their work in the mountain — that they must clear out before day- 
break.* 

Drunkenness was a vice by no means limited to the humble or 
the middle classes. It was universal. No man of any grade was 
ashamed of it ; on the contrary, an Irishman drunk was " an Irish- 
man all in his glory." It was considered the rankest breach of hos- 
pitality to suffer a guest to leave a house sober ; indeed, it was a 
thing never thought of.f There are stories in abundance to illus- 
trate this miserable phase of character ; those who want them may 
find them " in heaps," in volumes such as " Sir Jonah Barrington's 
Memoirs," and " Ireland Sixty Years ago," a most remarkable book 
written by my valued friend John Edward Walsh, late Master of 
the Rolls in Ireland. It is published anonymously ; a new edition 
has recently been issued, but deprived of its most important part — 
the preface. 

Of course always at a dinner-party, after the ladies left the table 
the regular drinking began. No lady expected to see her husband 
until he required help to enable him to ascend or descend the stair- 
case. I once dined at a farmers' club dinner, at Rosscarberry. 
When the guests made their "tumblers," having put in the usual 
glass of whisky, the sugar, and the lemon, they proceeded to fill up 
from the kettle. Finding the mixture somewhat strong, they added 
more from the kettle ; and then, being sure that it was of the proper 
strength, drank. The kettle contained — not hot water, but semi- 
boiled whisky. Never shall I forget the scene that followed not long 
afterward, when every man of that party (excepting myself) issued 
forth a drunken beast. Some lay in the hedges and ditches about, 
to get a little sober ; and for others, low-backed cars were impro- 
vised. They got home alive — probably to repeat the experiment on 
the next market-day. 

Yes, all classes were drunkards — the high, the middle, and the 
low, had pride, rather than shame, in the quantity of whisky they 
could imbibe ; and scorned to be able to walk straight, or to count 
with accuracy the number of decanters or bottles on the table. He 

* I need not comment on the continual peril in which the gauger lived. In 
fact, his life was never his own. It is an old story that of the priest who was con- 
fessing a dying "penitent." In conclusion the priest said, " Is there no one good 
thing ye ever did to place against such a heap of accumulated sins? " This was 
the man's answer : " Well, yer Riverence, I have one ; I shot a gauger." 

f Force was often applied when persuasion was unsuccessful. It is not a fable 
— the story that tells us of a "hospitable" host who placed a pistol by the side of 
his dessert-plate, and swore he would shoot the first of his guests who rose from 
his seat to seek the door of exit. That actually happened to my father when quar- 
tered as a young ensign in Limerick, and dining with a famous gentleman there. 
He escaped the penalty of drunkenness ot death by watching his opportunity and 
leaping out of the window. 



284 WAKES AND FUNERALS. 

was not drunk who could do that. " Begin early," was the frequent 
advice of fathers to their boy-sons. 

I knew a gentleman of this " good old class " who complained to 
me, in a tone of protest against Providence, that he could never 
take more than three bottles (of claret), while some of his neighbor- 
friends could take four. " But ye see," he added, " they began airly. 
I didn't come into my property till I was a middle-aged man." 
That gentleman had been a member of the Hellfire Club — an in- 
famous society that, late in the last century, inculcated debauchery 
as a duty, and taught and practiced drunkenness as an institution. 
Yet it included the names of several renowned persons of high 
grades. 

[Things were, perhaps, as bad in England, and certainly so in 
Scotland. James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, told me he once 
dined on a Wednesday, at a farmers' dinner, in some town, the name 
of which I forget. There were two market-days, the other being 
Saturday. He left the party on the Wednesday, and going to market 
on Saturday, found the drinkers still at table, having, in fact, never 
left it, or but for a few minutes at a time.] 

Wakes and funerals were shocking scenes of drunken debauchery, 
lasting through three or four nights and days of wasteful and wicked 
extravagance, out of which came a year's penance of semi-starva- 
tion. It was by no means uncommon for the guests to drink from 
the death-hour to the burial. I have frequently seen a band of fifty 
men in a graveyard, every one of whom was more or less drunk ; and 
I have seen a corpse surrounded by the orgies of old superstition, 
but apparently not more lifeless than the ''friends" and "hired 
weepers " who were lying in all possible attitudes on the floor beside 
it.* 

* I remember this case : I knew it at the time it occurred. Two young officers 
(tourists) were discoursing across a car, and lamenting that they were returning to 
England, without having seen what they so much wished to see — an Irish wake. 
The driver listened, turned to his fare, and said, " It will be asy for ye to do that, 
gintlemen ; sure, there's a brother-in-law o' mine lying dead on the mountain up 
there — and they'll wake him to-night." Of course an arrangement was made — to 
be present at the ceremony. When evening came, their driver conveyed them to 
the spot, of course with a liberal supply of whisky and tobacco ; and they did wit- 
ness an Irish wake : the body laid out on the bed : many of the neighbors about : 
the women melodiously chanting the praises of the dead " boy." All was going 
on right well, until one of the guests thought he saw the muscles of " deceased " 
move : he took his lighted cigar between his fingers, and thrust it up the nostril of 
the corpse. There was an awful screech : up sprang the corpse in the death- 
clothes : rushed through the throng of mourners, followed by the officers with their 
drawn swords — indignant at the fraud. There was a general helter-skelter : when 
they returned to the cabin they found it empty, and had a midnight walk to their 
hotel. 



REFORM OF THE UPPER CLASSES. 285 

Perhaps the most fertile sources of the eloquence of Irish pathos 
are to be found in the Keens, or death-songs — which used in former 
times to characterize every Irish funeral : they are now far less fre- 
quent if not altogether gone ; but " the Books "preserve a vast num- 
ber of compositions — perfectly unstudied — which no educated poet 
ever surpassed in delicacy and force. 

I have heard the keen often, and been strongly touched by it al- 
ways : heard it upon the slopes of bleak and barren mountains : heard 
it in the depths of fertile valleys : by the sides of running streams, 
brawling rivers, and the wild sea-shore : and memories of pathetic 
death-chants, although dreary and monotonous in sound, and in a 
language I did not understand, are among those that have left the 
strongest impressions upon my mind in association with my remem- 
brances of Ireland. 

It was not among the upper and middle classes that Father 
Mathew did his work. Reform gradually spread — upward : the ex- 
ample of the humble guided the proud, and it is among the most 
marvelous of modern miracles that the wine and whisky drinkers of 
the " better " classes were led to reason and reflect, and ultimately 
were converted, by what they saw as the effects of Total Abstinence 
among their poorer neighbors and dependents. Let there be no 
mistake in this : I know it is so. No doubt other influences were at 
work, and very largely contributed to induce temperance among 
those who were out of Father Mathew's reach ; but it was not till 
1840 that temperance was considered respectable and drunkenness 
degrading ; and that was after the good priest had carried convic- 
tion to the lower classes. 

With the upper class the reformation had endured ; a gentleman 
is now never seen intoxicated in a drawing-room. If he were so, so 
far from his host exulting in his degradation, he would never be a 
guest in that house again. I of course allude to society of which 
ladies form a part ; for probably excess is by no means a stranger at 
clubs and what are called " gentlemen's parties." 

And I maintain — speaking from actual knowledge and experience 
— that the change which a very short space of time wrought in the 
habits of the upper orders was as surely the effect of Father Mathew's 
teaching and preaching, as it is certain that he converted millions of 
the lower classes from drunkenness to sobriety. 

It is needless to say aught as regards the immorality of which 
drink was the direct and indirect promoter. Those who are aged 
can remember something of the after-dinner toasts and talk that 
garnished the " bottle " — when the ladies had left the table. It was 
but one of the outer signs of the depravity that was barely consid- 
ered evil ; the so-called " social vice " had its sustainer in the social 
glass, and usually the provocatives to the one were furnished by the 



286 FACTION FIGHTS. 

other. As far as Ireland was concerned, that bane was limited to 
the upper classes, at least to a very large extent. I have borne some 
testimony, and rejoice at an occasion to do so again, to the purity of 
Irish peasant-women. No doubt, some of it must be attributed to 
the dread of the priest who, in confession, must know all ; but there 
is inherent, I will say instinctive, virtue in the class. 

Among the most accursed of all the miseries thus induced were 
the Faction Fights. Few of my readers can have seen one. I have 
seen many : one where there was a death, and more than one where 
several of the " fighters " had broken heads and limbs. Indeed, it 
was common enough to witness what were facetiously called " wigs on 
the green " — the field covered with men not able to move from the 
spots on which they had fallen. I have seen that of which many 
have read : a stout fellow, more than half drunk, rushing about a 
fair, beseeching some one " for God's sake " to tread upon the tail 
of the coat he was trailing behind him. In these fights women often 
took part, sometimes by carrying stones in a stocking, with which 
they belabored the craniums of the foe — an O'Kelly or an O'Leary 
as it might be. 

I was visiting a magistrate in Kerry County when a stalwart fel- 
low was brought in a prisoner, charged with nearly killing an old 
bald-headed man, whose head was a bloody mass. Being asked to 
swear information against the accused who had wounded him, the 
injured man was silent, and on being pressed absolutely refused. 
" What was it this fellow did to you ? " asked the magistrate. 
" Nothing," was the answer. The magistrate turned to the culprit 
— "Are you not ashamed," he said, "to have half killed this old 
man, who will not even give information against you ? Had you any 
ill-will to him?" "Oh ! none at all, yer honor ; I never saw him 
before to-day." "Then what made you do it?" "Well, I'll tell 
yer honor God's truth. Ye see, I came late into the fair ; luck was 
agin me, for all the fighting was over ; so, as I was strutting about, 
looking for some boy to cross a stick wid, I saw this poor man's bald 
head poked out of a slit of the tent that he might cool it ; and it 
looked so inviting that, for the sowl o' me, I couldn't help hitting the 
blow."* 

If whisky was always the foundation of faction-fights, public- 
houses were the dens at which councils of war were held. Faction- 
fights ceased soon after the mission of Father Mathew commenced ; 
they died out into traditions. As one of the converts said : " At the 
last fair in Tralee there wasn't a stick lifted ; but the Lawlers and the 
Cooleens met for the first time in the memory of man widout laving a 
dead boy to be carried home to the widdy's cabin." 

* A magistrate (Grogan Morgan) in Wexford County gave me a stick that had 
killed three men at a faction-fight. Such sticks (usually blackthorn) were gener- 
ally hardened in the chimney, being frequently larded with butter. 



THE IRISHMAN IN HIS GLORY 7 287 

It has been rightly said that, of all the races that have ever ex- 
isted, the Irish is the one that ought most carefully to avoid heating 
with stimulants an already too-mercurial temperament. To the 
Irish at home drink is a curse ; to the Irish abroad drink is absolute 
ruin. Everywhere, and under all circumstances, the sober Irishman 
is sure of prosperity, while the drunken Irishman is always degraded ; 
his lightness of heart, his natural and inherited vigor of constitution, 
his capacity for hard labor, all succumb before the pernicious wear 
and tear resulting from accursed alcohol ; and he becomes an absolute 
fiend, ready to work any evil, with the miserable apology, " 'Twas 
the drink that did it ! " 

Thus, at the time of which I write, drunkenness was the bane, 
and yet, in a measure, the boast of the Irishman. The gentry gave 
examples to the peasant, and the practice, if not sanctioned, was cer- 
tainly not condemned, by the priests, who were the religious, and, to 
a 'large extent, the moral and social, guides of the people. When 
writers described and artists painted an Irishman, he was generally 
represented as the " better " for liquor ; and when an Irishman was 
exhibited on the stage, it was considered indispensable that he should 
be more or less drunk. Poets aided to keep up the hideous delu- 
sion ; the greatest of them all, who certainly was himself no drunk- 
ard, in some of the finest of the " Melodies," inculcates the duty of 
filling and emptying glasses, " wreathing the bowl with flowers of 
soul ! " I remember a popular song that blessed the Pope and the 
Council of Trent, who 

" Laid fast upon mate and not upon drink." 

Whisky was "mate, drink, and clothing," "my outside coat, I have 
no other," " mavourneen," " my joy and my jewel," " a cordial for 
all eyes that ache" — in short, whisky was the. panacea that cured all 
the evils flesh is heir to, and raised the soul from earth to heaven. The 
humbler " poets " were content to laud the " whisky that makes men 
frisky " ; while the poets who ministered to the vice in the upper 
classes told us, in mellifluous verse, that — 

" Wine, wine is the steed of Parnassus, 
That hurries a bard to the skies." 

Yes : every offense was traceable to drink : secret societies in 
which murders were organized had their headquarters in public- 
houses ; those who were to do deeds of blood were so plied with 
whisky that they had just reason enough left to draw a trigger. In 
short, then — as, alas ! now and always — drink was answerable for 
nine tenths of the crime that was perpetrated, while the public-house 
was — then as now — its prompter, upholder, and propagator : the den 
from which demons issued to do their wicked work. 

In spite of the direct encouragements to drink, and the absence 
of efforts to promote abstinence, the terrible consequences of intoxi- 



288 FATHER MATHEW BEGINS WORK. 

cation were often too obvious to escape notice, and efforts were oc- 
casionally made to diminish or suppress the evil. They were weak 
and ineffective. Sometimes good and holy workers in the cause 
would teach, as well as preach, temperance, and obtain promises of 
sobriety : remembered — for a season. Nay, it was no uncommon 
thing for a peasant to take an oath against whisky — which he pres- 
ently broke ; deluding himself, the while, with the idea that he kept it. 
Thus, I remember a man who swore he would only take one glass in 
a day, but he procured a glass that contained a pint. Another, who 
swore he would not drink a drop inside the house or outside of it, 
strode across the threshold, one leg in, the other out, and so drank him- 
self drunk ; while a third, who was pledged not to drink a drop while 
he stood on earth, climbed a tree with a full bottle in his breast- 
pocket and brought it down empty.* As with the common class, so 
it was with the upper orders. I knew a gentleman who daily con- 
sumed twenty tumblers of whisky-punch, and another who boasted 
that in a long life he had drunk whisky-punch sufficient to float a 
seventy- four-gun ship. There was a somewhat remarkable trial in 
Dublin. An Insurance Company refused to pay the insurance on a 
life — the ground of refusal being that the life had been willfully sac- 
rificed to drink. The legatee put in the witness-box an old man, 
who swore that it had been his daily custom for many years to drink 
twenty-five tumblers of whisky-punch — and more ! Being ques- 
tioned as to how many more, he answered, " By the virtue of my oath, 
I never could count after five-and-twenty." 

Ingenious devices were invented for compelling intoxication. I 
have seen some glasses (at one time in frequent use) made without 
a stem or base (like modern soda-water bottles), so that the drinker 
could not place such a goblet on the table, but was obliged to empty 
it before he laid it down ; and I have been told that there were de- 
canters constructed on the same principle — there being a hole at one 
end of the table in which the decanter was placed when it had to be 
filled. That was " circulating the wine freely." 

I am drawing near the memorable ioth of April, 1838, when the 
Rev. Theobald Mathew commenced his crusade against whisky. 
The good priest was not young : his years approached fifty : and he 
might have been justified in lessening, rather than augmenting, the 
labor of his life. His reputation was high in the city where he 
worked ; his eloquence had found its way to the hearts of many of 
his hearers ; his disposition led him to give all he had or could 

* One of the funniest of Carleton's stories concerns Peter Connell, who set up a 
shebeen-house, and painted over the door — 

" No credit given— barrin' a trifle to Pether's friends." 
Friends he soon had galore. He soon found it wouldn't do. So he placed over his 
door another placard, intimating that — " divil a morsel o' credit would be given at 
all at all, barrin' them that axes it has the ready money." 



THE TEMPERANCE REFORM. 



289 



have ; his order bound him to poverty. Benevolence was a part of 
his nature ; he could not help loving those whose souls God had 
committed to his care. He was remarkably active and energetic, 
rising early and working no matter how long or late. His personal 
appearance was greatly in his favor : rather above than under the 
middle size, not stout, but not thin, the expression of his counte- 
nance indescribably sweet and winning ; the features sharply cut and 
prominent (with the characteristics that are usually assumed to ac- 
company good descent, " good blood," for his progenitors were of 
the aristocracy). He might have been called handsome ; he had 
the beauty of person that can never exist without beauty of soul ; 
the mind spoke in the face, and the language was that of gentleness, 
patience, endurance, tenderness, loving-kindness, and hopeful affec- 
tion, such as I have never seen more forcibly marked in any one of 
the thousands of distinguished and good men on whom I have 
looked. There was in his manner no affectation of humility, yet 
there was true humility in the absence of all assumption and pre- 
tense. 

This is my portrait of him in 1840 : " No one can hesitate to be- 
lieve he has been stimulated by pure benevolence to the work he has 
undertaken. The expression of his countenance is peculiarly mild 
and gracious, his manner is most persuasive, simple, and easy with- 
out a shadow of affectation, and his voice is low and musical — ' such 
as moves men.' A man better fitted to obtain influence over a peo- 
ple easily led and proverbially swayed by the affections, I have never 
known. No man has borne his honors more meekly, encountered 
opposition with greater gentleness and forbearance, or disarmed hos- 
tility by weapons better suited to a Christian." 

I never saw any one of God's missionaries to mankind who 
seemed so eminently fitted for the work God gave him to do. And 
such by all accounts he was when, on that spring morning, the 10th 
of April, 1838, the good priest received a visit from a simple Quaker, 
a tradesman of the city, named William Martin. 

The " Friend " had been for some time laboring to form a band 
of pledged temperance members, and to expose the evils of the vice 
and the wisdom of its opposite. But to Cork does not belong the 
honor of originating the temperance movement in Ireland : that 
must be accorded to the comparatively small town of New Ross in 
the county of Wexford ; and the " Baptist " of the Reformation was 
the Reverend George Carr, a clergyman of the Established Church — 
I may add,- with justifiable gratification, a relative of Mrs. S. C. Hall. 
I remember conversing with him on the subject long before I had 
witnessed the work of Father Mathew ; long, indeed, before the good 
priest began his labors ; but I was then a skeptic as to the probability 
of any significant change, and, perhaps, rather a patron than an op- 
ponent of the "social glass." Mr. Carr's operations were very lim- 
ited : he could not reach the great masses of the people who were of 
19 



290 



IN THE NAME OF GOD! 



the opposite creed ; although he did something, it was but a little. 
William Martin was probably similarly circumstanced, when Provi- 
dence suggested to him the wisdom of seeking an ally, or rather a 
leader, in the Francisan friar, Theobald Mathew.* 

The idea of total abstinence was at that time regarded as neither 
more nor less than a jest, and a social gathering without whisky as a 
chimera. William Martin, the good Quaker ; Nicholas Dunscombe, 
a clergyman of the Established Church ; and Richard Dowden, a 
Unitarian, appealed to Fathew Mathew ! I knew in my youth these 
three good men ; Dowden was, indeed, one of my most esteemed 
and valued friends. Hearty and zealous workers they were — not- 
withstanding their conviction that the result of their labors would be 
total failure instead of total abstinence. They had only the power 
that Hope brings ; three Protestants — what could they have done ? 

[" Father Mathew approached the table, and, taking the pen, said 
heard by all, and remembered by many, ' Here goes, in the name 
of God ! ' and signed ' Rev. Theobald Mathew, C. C, No. 1, Cove 
Street.' "] 

In June or July, 1840, we (Mrs. Hall and I) were in Cork — a 
city with which I was well acquainted some twenty years earlier ; 
where, indeed, I had been a resident, from boyhood up to the 
dawn of manhood, and where my mind, though not my body, had 
birth. 

It was part of my duty to describe this Temperance movement, 
then comparatively new, of which only vague and contradictory 
rumors had reached England. I confess I was skeptical on the 
subject ; my prejudice was against rather than in favor of the Roman 
Catholic priest, and I doubted the extent of the work he was said 
to be doing. I sought no introduction to him, called upon him 
without any, and if I did not immediately become a convert to his 
principles, I was at once convinced of his earnestness, truth, and lov- 

* Very early, a temperance society had been formed at New Ross — in 1829. 
George Carr borrowed the idea from the United States ; he had read in some 
American papers details of what had been accomplished there, and thought he 
might " do likewise." The society adopted a pledge " to use no alcoholic drinks 
except as medicine ; not to allow the use of them in their families nor provide them 
for the entertainment of their friends, and in all suitable ways to discountenance 
the use of them in the community at large." 

But he who commenced the temperance movement in Ireland was the Rev. 
John Edgar, a Presbyterian clergyman of Belfast, whom I had the honor to know. 
It was at his table I first saw a dinner without wine. In August 1829, he received 
a visit from Dr. Penny, of America, who informed him concerning the then infant 
movement in the United States. Dr. Edgar, who had previously made some effort 
for the cause, at once proceeded to form societies. On the 14th of August, 1829, 
his first address was issued, and within a year 100,000 small works on temperance 
were issued from Belfast. Honored be the memory of the great and good pioneer 
of the Temperance Reform ! 



HARD AT WORK. 



291 



ing nature — that he was discharging his duty as the friend of man 
as well as the chosen apostle of his Lord and Master. 

How greatly the faculty of love for humankind inspired and di- 
rected his work it is needless for me to say. The eloquence of his 
manner was irresistible. The first interview with him induced a 
conviction which reflection confirmed, that he was a true disciple of 
Christ, working in accordance with His precepts, and imitating, as 
far as humanity can, His example. I have intimated that his worth 
was by no means unknown when the little group of Protestants ap- 
pealed to the Roman Catholic priest. He had been one of the hard- 
working servants of God, in many ways, during many years — a man 
good, gentle, generous, sympathizing, just ; always caring more for 
others than for himself ; cheerful, hopeful, truthful, faithful ; so they 
write of him who knew him as child and youth. In his prime he 
was busy — always busy — doing God's work for the good of man, 
but with the loving tenderness of John rather than the fiery zeal of 
Peter. One of his frequent sayings was, " A pint of oil is better 
than a hogshead of vinegar " ; another, " Preach to the poor, and 
your preaching will always serve for the rich." He had been sorely 
tried during the awful cholera visitation of 1832. In 1830 he had 
purchased the Cork Botanic Garden and converted it into a ceme- 
tery, long before such " God's acres " became the fashion — stimu- 
lated to that work by a wretched relic of the Penal Laws, that 
forbade a Roman Catholic priest to pray over the mortal remains of 
a Roman Catholic layman, in the very graveyard, perhaps, where 
lay the bones of scores of his far-off ancestors. 

His eloquence, too, was largely appreciated. It was known that 
the higher orders respected and esteemed him, and that the lower 
classes honored and loved him. A wiser choice than that of the 
Quaker and his friends could not have been made. Besides all this, 
he was no political agitator. He soon foresaw that to mix up " Re- 
peal " with temperance advocacy would be to ruin the cause, and 
resisted steadfastly the blandishments of its partisans. He had no 
thought of proselytizing — he only sought to win converts to temper- 
ance. Once when he was administering the pledge, a recipient, after 
he had taken it, murmured, " But, sir, I am an Orangeman ! " "I 
wouldn't care if you were a lemon-man," said the priest, and passed 
on. 

The pledge was simply this : " I promise to abstain from all in- 
toxicating drinks, except used medicinally and by order of a medical 
man, and to discountenance the cause and practice of intemperance." 
The reverend priest then made a sign of the cross on the forehead 
of the neophyte and said, " God give you strength to keep your 
resolution ! " 

Sometimes a man would come to take the pledge in a state of 
intoxication : he had resolved to have a " deoch-an-durrass " — a 



292 



THE PLEDGE TO THE CROWDS. 



parting glass. Father Mathew did not refuse to enroll him — and he 
was right. Many such thus took "the drop" for the last time. 
Occasionally, converts would deliberately resolve to get rid of the 
pledge and return to the drink. It was not a very uncommon thing 
for a man to put his head in at the door, and blare out some such 
expression as " There it is ! " throw in the medal, and run away as 
fast as his legs could carry him, sometimes pursued by Father Math- 
ew's attendants in the vain hope of bringing him back. Nay, more 
than once it happened that the duty of giving chase fell to the good 
priest himself. At other times, men would try to strike a bargain 
with the priest, to have "lave " for one a day ; a petition always de- 
clined — it was the teetotal pledge or nothing. 

I once saw him administer the pledge to some thousands ; it 
was, I think, at Buttevant. I was driving through the town on one 
of Bianconi's cars, and easily persuaded the driver to allow me time 
to witness the scene. I can never forget it. All the men and 
women were kneeling on a greensward, or on the road that skirted 
it. Often there was a burst of weeping from some barefooted wife, 
and now and then a wretched child clung to the ragged coat of its 
father. The repenting sinners were old and young, of both sexes, 
and among them prevailed a terrible aspect of poverty with not a 
few indications of the vice. Half of them were hungry, and had no 
prospect of food — they were pushing away from them what was, 
after all, their only luxury ; some no doubt prompted by reason and 
reflection, some by superstition, some in accordance with an almost 
instinctive rule, by which numbers will follow where a few lead. 
There were audible sobbings in the crowd — comments and blessings. 
I saw some skulking behind, and believed they were those who had 
taken the pledge and broken it, and came to take it again. It was 
never refused. And I saw more than one stalwart fellow whose 
wife was half coaxing him, half forcing him, to " kneel at the priest's 
knee." Boys and girls came up by scores ; such pledge-takers were 
the best rewards of the good priest's labors ; and here and there a 
well-dressed man, obviously of a grade much removed from the cot- 
tier, was waiting for his turn. I could not remain to hear the brass 
band that escorted " the Apostle " to his lodging, but such scenes 
had generally such aids. I had but a brief time to stay — sufficiently 
long, however, to strengthen my impression into entire conviction — 
that the work was of God. 

Some months after my visit to Father Mathew, I was enabled to 
test the force of the pledge. Traveling through Wicklow, en route 
to wild Glendalough, I had stopped at Roundtown to find a guide. 
A young man was pointed out to me leaning against the door of his 
cabin. I at once engaged him, and in my impatience bade him get 
up on the car, rejecting his appeal for permission to go in and put 
on a more respectable dress. The afternoon, of early autumn, was 



THE GUIDE TO GLENDALOUGH. 293 

raw and cold, and I drew up on the summit of a mountain to take 
some refreshment. Of course I offered the guide his share. The 
sandwiches he took readily, but much to my surprise declined the 
proffered flask. I urged him, unfairly — to test his resolution : after 
trying persuasion, I laid a crown-piece on the seat and said, " Now, 
my lad, you shall have that if you will take a sup of this whisky." 

" No," he said ; " not for ten thousand times the crown-piece, 
nor for all the lands of Lord Powerscourt if they were yours to give 
them, would I touch a single drop. Your honor must hear me. 
There wasn't in the county of Wicklow a greater blackguard than I 
was — fighting and drinking I was all day and all night ; the rags I 
had on were not worth a traneen ; and often the pratees I ate I 
begged from a poor neighbor. The old granny, that lived with me, 
starved and prayed. There was no house but one, in the place or 
near it, would open the door to me : that one was the public-house, 
where I spent all the little I earned. That was the way of it, yer hon- 
or. How is it now ? It isn't this coat I'd have worn if you'd given 
me time to change it, for I have a better, and a top-coat besides. 
If you'd gone into my cabin, you'd say you'd seldom seen one more 
comfortable ; and you'd have noticed the old grandmother silting on 
her hunkers, knitting, by the side of a turf-fire. There isn't a neigh- 
bor, boy or girl, that wouldn't say to me, ' God save ye kindly ' ; 
and I have five pounds in the savings-bank ; and when I make it ten 
there's one I'll ask to share the cabin with the old woman and me. 
Now that I've told yer honor what I have to tell, and how all that is 
the work of the pledge I took — will yer honor ask me to break it and 
take the poison-drop from your hand ? " It is needless to say I was 
greatly touched. My answer was instant. " Indeed, my lad," I said, 
" I will not ; but I will at least pay you this compliment," and I 
flung the flask over the cliff, far into the lake beneath. The guide 
literally danced with joy. I think I never saw happiness expressed 
so strongly.* 

Within two years after the memorable 10th of April, 1838, 
Father Mathew had traveled through every district of Ireland, had 
held meetings in all the towns and in many of the villages, and the 
pledge had been taken by upward of two millions and a half of the 
population. That was not all. He visited England and Scotland, 
and spent two years working in the United States of America. His 
labor was superhuman : the good he did incalculable. 

An estimate may be formed of it, though but a rough one, by 
certain " Returns " furnished to Government. The visible signs 
were recognized. It was easy to calculate the immense saving to the 
state as a consequence of the paucity of crime by the absence of its 

* I have enlarged this anecdote into a tract. It has been published at a nomi- 
nal price by, I think, three of the temperance publishers, and many thousands of 
them have been circulated. 



294 HOSPITALS AND JAILS EMPTY. 

provocatives. Compare 1837 with 1841. In the one year there were 
247 homicides, in the other 105 ; robberies dwindled from 725 to 
257 ; robberies of arms, from 246 to in. In 1839, the number of 
" committals " was 12,000 ; in 1845, the number barely passed 7,000. 
In 1839, 66 persons were sentenced to death ; in 1842, the number 
was 25 ; and in 1846, 14. In 1839, 916 persons were sentenced to 
transportation ; in 1846, 504. 

With regard to the duty on spirits, the " loss " to the revenue 
was large. In 1839 duty was paid on more than twelve millions of 
gallons of whisky, to say nothing of that which paid no duty. In 
1843 and 1844 the amount was much less than half. Naturally and 
necessarily, the state gained more than it lost — indirectly and di- 
rectly. The material prosperity of Ireland was augmented in a 
hundred ways ; and the money saved, when not laid by, was ex- 
pended on such manufactured luxuries as warm clothing, feather 
beds, " stocks of furniture," tea and coffee, and sugar. No doubt, 
vested interests were terribly interfered with ; distillers were ruined, 
among others the brother of Theobald Mathew, who followed that 
accursed calling. " Change your trade," wrote the priest to the dis- 
tiller, " and turn your premises into factories for flour." Landlords 
who had let their houses to publicans had to lower their rents or do 
without any ; the doctors had little employment, and the lawyers 
less ; faction - fights became rarities ; fairs and " patterns " were 
made " lonesome " ; denounced emissaries from secret societies were 
in despair — Father Mathew " proclaimed " them as " full of danger, 
of vice, of iniquity," as " originating the crimes that brought a curse 
on the land." * The hospitals as well as the jails were empty. 
Surgeon Carmichael, writing in 1843, said, comparing the past with 
the present of Richmond Surgical Hospital, " Since Father Mathew 
made us a sober people, we do not find a single instance of wounds, 
burns, or scalds attributed to drunkenness." f 

It is on record that he administered the pledge at Glasgow to 
10,000 people in one day. The crowd was so dense, that those who 

* " I have always, earnestly, perseveringly, emphatically, cautioned the people 
against those secret societies, because they are filled with danger, with vice, with 
iniquity — because they cut at the roots of social order — because they are the blight 
and bane of social happiness." — Speech at Tipperary. 

" The perpetrators of these red-handed murders can not escape the just anger of 
God. Though the brand of Cain on their brow may not be apparent to the eyes 
of mortals, to the eye of the Eternal it is as plain as the sun at noon is to us." — 
Speech at Kilfeacle. 

f I do not think it requisite to copy much from the abundant testimonies to the 
influence and effects of Father Mathew's work : they might fill a volume. There 
are two, however, I desire to quote : the first is from Lord Morpeth, then the Irish 
Secretary, the other is from Maria Edgeworth. 

" I will ask, considering this pure and lofty renovation of a nation's virtue, is 
there anything which seems too large to hope for, or too bright to realize ? This 
change which has passed over the people seems to have been anticipated by the 



TESTIMONIALS. 2 g$ 

took it, kneeling, " never saw his face," so rapidly was each person 
removed to make way for another. Then, and on other occasions, 
he was standing administering the pledge from ten until six o'clock. 
At length the physical strength of Father Mathew gave way. 
" The brain o'erwrought," the continued toil, traveling by night and 
day, the want of rest, and, deadliest of all, the perpetual anxiety — 
which those only who have restricted means and great needs can 
rightly estimate — told terribly on his constitution. There had been 
no self-indulgence to weaken, no luxurious ease to create rust ; his 
was that precious gift — a healthy mind in a healthy body, and so he 
was enabled to do the work, not of two, but of ten. He said he 
would " die in harness," and he did. Even after a paralytic seizure 
he gave the pledge to thousands ; and when he had succumbed to 
an attack of apoplexy and lay on his death-bed, he could hear the 
words and, with his crippled hands, make the sign of the cross. 

Who is it that says of saints appointed to do God's work on 
earth, " There will be time enough for rest in heaven " ? Theobald 
Mathew seems never to have wearied ; once when reasoned with as 
to his early rising, he pointed to a busy cooper, and said : " He is 
up before me ; shall I grudge to do for my Master what that man 
does for his ? " 

In 1843 a testimonial was presented to Father Mathew on account 
of his services to Ireland. The requisition for a meeting was signed 
by two dukes, four marquises, nineteen earls, ten viscounts, forty 
baronets, with " an immense number of clergymen and gentlemen of 
all denominations." From the beginning, Protestants were hardly 
less enthusiastic than Roman Catholics in lauding the humble priest. 
The very highest in the realm, in England as well as in Ireland, bore 
testimony that " his labors entitled him to the immeasurable grati- 
tude and ardent admiration of all ranks and persuasions throughout 
the British Empire." 

During his visit to England in 1844, Stanley, Bishop of Norwich, 
hailed his presence at Norwich in these words : " It will be my duty 

poet of a former day, who is never so much at home as when he celebrates heroic 
or holy actions : 

' The wretch who once sang wildly, danced and laughed, 

And sucked in dizzy madness with his draught, 

Has wept a silent flood — reversed his ways — 

Is sober, meek, benevolent — and prays.' 
" They have become able and willing to work, and to take care of their farms 
and business — are decently clothed, and healthy and happy, and now make their 
wives and children happy, instead of, as before their reformation, miserable and 
half heart-broken. I have heard some of the strong expressions of delight of some 
of the wives of the reformed drunkards. ... I consider Father Matthew as the 
greatest benefactor to his country — the most true friend to Irishmen and to Ire- 
land." 



296 difficulties. 

to pay every respect to an individual to whose zealous exertions in 
recovering so large a portion of the community from the degrading 
and ruinous effects of intemperance men of all religious persuasions 
owe a debt of gratitude." The venerable and estimable Protestant 
prelate was not solitary in thus greeting the Franciscan friar of Cork. 

It was at a later period — in 1845 — that efforts were made in Eng- 
land, with what results at that time I can not say, to aid the work of 
the good priest by subscriptions raised in this country. At one of 
the meetings of members of the Temperance Society of Marylebone 
and Paddington I was in the chair, when an address written by me 
was agreed to. 

I have preserved a copy of it, and think I can not do better than 
print one or two passages from it : 

" The results of your hard and incessant toil are well known to all of us. 
You have not only rescued millions from the evils incident to a debasing 
habit ; displaced perilous and momentary pleasures by substituting permanent 
comforts and substantial luxuries ; converted hundreds of thousands of use- 
less or pernicious men and women into industrious and serviceable members 
of society ; and rendered revolting and disgusting in universal estimation the 
vice most pregnant with mischief to every class of the community ; but among 
the minor benefits produced by that reform, which God has made you his 
chief instrument for bringing about, we may not forget the absolute saving 
effected by your means — by preventing an expenditure, not only needless, but 
injurious and pernicious. 

" Rev. and Dear Sir : It is among the leading sources of our happiness to 
know that task has been performed with so much meekness and humility, as 
to disarm all opponents — that we recognize in you the unassuming and un- 
affected minister of Christ — still lowly in heart and mind as the humblest of 
your followers, although your name is honored in every portion of the civil- 
ized globe, not only as the great benefactor, the true patriot, but as the 
founder of a society more numerous than any that has existed in modern 
times." 

From several causes, Father Mathew, toward the close of 1846 
and the beginning of 1847, became seriously embarrassed by want of 
money to meet the necessary expenses for carrying on his mighty 
work of mercy. Some of his friends in England and Ireland con- 
ceived the idea of a public appeal for aid. A Major Russell was in- 
troduced to me, and brought me a letter from Mr. Mathew.* I was 



* It was in April, 1846, that Major Russell brought me from Mr. Mathew the 
following letter, which I have fortunately kept : 

" Cork, March 30, 1846. 

" My Dear Mr. Russell : 

" As you are perfectly aware of the sincerity of the respect and gratitude I 
cherish for Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall, it was unnecessary for you to wait for a letter 
from me. You could from yourself say to these accomplished and benevolent 
persons, from whom I have received such favors, all that a knowledge of my senti- 
ments warranted you to express." 

I should greatly like to know what became of the papers and documents pro- 



HIS PENSION. 



297 



expected to take an active part in promoting the scheme : and I did 
so. There was little or no difficulty in the way of a great success. 
It was a primary object, after relieving Mr. Mathew of immediate 
and pressing needs, to raise a fund by which an annuity might be 
secured to him for his life. It was calculated that about ^7,000 
would yield an available annual income of ^500, and that such a 
sum would suffice. I undertook the duty of honorary secretary, and 
the work was begun by inviting certain noblemen, clergymen, and 
gentlemen of various countries and creeds to become members of a 
committee. There was not a single negative to the applications. 
The Earl of Arundel undertook the post of president, and the list 
contained the honored names of the Marquis of Lansdowne, Lord 
John Russell, Sir Robert Peel, and many others of high social rank, 
of both religions, and of various shades in politics. 

These distinguished persons, and many others, sent their sub- 
scriptions, and I have no doubt the desired amount would have been 
raised ; for the project was warmly advocated by the press, and evi- 
dence of enormous good effects was not far to seek ; when the awful 
famine that almost decimated unhappy Ireland in 1847 arrested op- 
erations. Father Mathew sent to me an emphatic protest against 
any further effort to obtain money for Aim while masses of men, 
women, and children were perishing all about him ; proceedings were 
stayed or rather suspended ; to be resumed, it was hoped, under 
more auspicious circumstances. But just then a grant of £300 a 
year was conferred on Father Mathew — one of the Civil List Pen- 
sions — and the project was abandoned, after sending to the good 
priest the sum in hand — if I recollect rightly, about ,£700. Lord 
John Russell informed Father Mathew that the pension was granted 
to him by the Queen " as a mark of her approbation of your merito- 
rious exertions in combating the intemperance which in so many in- 
stances obscured and rendered fruitless the virtues of your country- 
men." 

Very little practical benefit, therefore, arose from the appoint- 
ment of the Committee. The grant made to him by Government 
barely sufficed to pay the insurances on his life, the sole securities 
of his creditors for debts contracted — how, wherefore, for whom ? * 



duced by this movement. I have none of any kind : they were no doubt given by 
me to Major Russell, and must be in existence somewhere. Mr. Maguire seems 
but insufficiently informed on the subject. I have preserved but two or three of 
Mr. Mathew's letters : one of them to Major Russell, dated March 31, 1846, con- 
tains this gratifying passage : " I blush when I reflect upon Mr. Hall's exertions in 
my behalf. He is more a brother to me than a friend." 

* The sum was pitiful considered with reference to the good he had done, the 
wealth he had diverted from an evil into a healthy channel, and the needs he had 
incurred in carrying on his work ; without making note of the enormous saving 
effected for the country, in the reduced expenditure for the conduct of public 
prosecutions, the maintenance of jails, and so forth. But, small as it was, it would 
seem to have been at first much smaller— an annual grant of only £100. In a 



298 OVERWORK! 

There was scarcely a town in Ireland that he had not visited — 
hardly one in which he had not done some portion of God's work. 
He was free of the coaches and " Bianconi's cars " certainly ; but 
even to him travel was costly. As a priest pledged to poverty, need- 
ing only the barest necessaries of life, constitutionally as well as by 
demands of his holy calling, ignoring luxuries — a very small sum 
indeed would have sufficed to supply all his own wants ; but there 
were a hundred ways in which money was needed, and certainly 
spent — "monster tea-parties," processions, brass bands, missionary 
aids — printers' bills, reading-rooms, and so forth. The medals he 
distributed were supposed to be a source of wealth, but they were 
in reality a cause of expense. Three out of every four were never 
paid for at all ; probably not one in fifty came to take the pledge 
with a shilling in his pocket to pay for the medal he received. 
[Father Mathew was arrested in Dublin for a debt incurred by rea- 
son of these medals.] * A score of other modes of expenditure 
crowded on him, to say nothing of the miseries he lessened, the 
wants he relieved, the money he gave when — hungry, and weary, 
and foot-sore — postulants came to him from long distances. Could 
he have sent them hungry and weary away? As soon would he 
have bidden them depart without the pledge. " If I have any 
money," he said, when thrust into a corner, " I give it to feed the 
hungry and clothe the naked." 

Tim " was not the only recipient of the pledge who spoke to 
something like the following effect at a public meeting : " 'Twas the 
crown-piece dat yer Reverence slipped into my fist dat set me up 
agin in de world." The truth is, Theobald Mathew was always giv- 
ing — giving at least as fast as he got. They must have a very weak 
insight into his character who imagine he could have kept a shilling 

letter addressed to me by Major Russell, dated September I, 1846, I find this 
passage : " You will be surprised, no doubt, when I inform you that the Govern- 
ment grant to Father Mathew is to be only £100 instead of £300. I received a 
letter yesterday from Lord Lansdowne, a copy of which I annex : ' Lord Lans- 
downe informs Major Russell that he fears he committed a mistake in the mention 
to him of a grant to Father Mathew ; he believes he stated it to be £300, when it 
should be £100. The arrangement of the grant being with the first Lord of the 
Treasury, Lord John Russell, and not with him.' " 

Major Russell adds : " I received a letter at the moment Lord Lansdowne's 
came to hand, from Father Mathew, stating he had received a note from Lord 
John Russell offering him £100 a year, but, thank Heaven, he spurned it, and re- 
fused the mean, paltry dole." It was subsequently made £300. 

* The rumor that every person who took the pledge also purchased a medal is 
thus disposed of in Father Mathew's words, spoken in Dublin in June, 1842, and 
frequently repeated in subsequent years : 

" I deny, in the strongest terms, that I am, as it is alleged by certain parties, 
making money off cards and medals, and I declare that I am a poorer man this 
day than the first day I gave the pledge ; for out of several thousands who take the 
pledge, not as many hundreds take a card or medal, so that the allegation is totally 
false. This is a fact well known in Cork and elsewhere ; for, if I have any money, 
I give it to feed the hungry, and clothe the naked." 



EFFORTS IN ENGLAND. 299 

in his pocket when he was daily moving among scenes of misery and 
want. He would have been poor if the coffers of the Bank of Eng- 
land had been at his command. 

The efforts of the Committee and the zeal of the Honorary 
Secretary, therefore, did little to help the work ; the sum granted 
by Government fell far short of the sum needed. As I have said, 
Father Mathew stopped the movement set on foot with a view to a 
general subscription, and it was not resumed.* 

* This letter may be printed here as evidence of the resolve of Father Mathew 
to stop collecting money for him : 

" Cork, January 3, 1847. 
" Dear Mrs. Hall : 

" By, I ardently hope, a happy coincidence, at the moment your honored letter 
reached me, I was writing a copy of an advertisement for a meeting of ladies, to 
make arrangements for what you suggest — a bazaar for the relief of the famishing 
people of Ireland. 

" The awful calamity with which the Lord in His inscrutable wisdom has vis- 
ited this stricken land, is decimating the Irish population. This has been a sor- 
rowful Christmas to all here, who have bodies to suffer or hearts to sympathize. 
Government is exerting all its powers to meet the dreadful crisis : but in vain. 
The greatest resources of the wisest administration can not secure from starvation 
the people of Ireland, collectively taken. Providence has ordained that the relief 
of the poor must depend upon the charity of the opulent. Yes, to private benevo- 
lence, the Lord has left this delightful task. By our faithful discharge of this in- 
dispensable obligation, the ways of Divine Providence are gloriously justified from 
the reproach of an unequal distribution of its gifts. The evils under which we 
suffer are grievously aggravated by the high price of breadstuff's. No wages a 
poor operative can earn are sufficient to purchase an adequate supply of food for 
his generally large family. They barely suffice to afford food of the cheapest kind 
for himself, leaving his wretched wife, children, and aged parents to fill their 
stomachs with the offal of the vegetable-gardens. 

" O great Father of all, what spectacles do we daily behold in all parts of this 
wretched country, moving skeletons whom despair has quickened and hunger has 
forced from their dismal habitations ! 

"From my knowledge of the humanity of the ladies of England, I feel confi- 
dent they will respond to your call and generously contribute to the bazaar for the 
purchase of food for their famishing fellow-creatures. I leave this work of mercy 
in your charitable hands. You know how to convey our cries to the ears of your 
sympathizing countrywomen, and once heard, they will munificently respond, for 
they have tender hearts ; but even if they had hearts of adamant they could not 
resist the lamentations of their brethren, perishing from extreme want, wrung by 
the tormenting pangs of famine. Praying that the Lord may bless you and all 
who care for the suffering members of Jesus Christ, 

" I am, with high respect, dear Mrs. Hall, 

" Your grateful and attached friend, 

" Theobald Mathew." 1 

1 Yet it is notorious that during the whole of the famine there was hardly an 
instance of theft. When an awful visitation was but commencing, I visited the 
Island of Achill, in Connemara. The people were literally dying of hunger : I 
trust I may never again have to endure the agony I endured that day — seeing men, 
women, and children, perishing all about me without the possibility of giving re- 
lief. All the food of every kind in the island had been consumed : it was at a 
period of the year when the potatoes were so small that an acre of them could 



300 



ANOTHER LONDON MEETING. 



Connected with this attempt to obtain a fund to provide for 
Father Mathew and assist him in his work, there are one or two in- 
teresting circumstances, and one that may seem melodramatic, as I 
have to tell it. 

I called a meeting of the Committee at my chambers in the Inner 
Temple ; it was in May, 1846. I had, of course, prepared a series 
of resolutions to be moved and seconded : but when the hour for 
the meeting arrived no one came to it, except Lord Arundel. He 
and I were alone ; for my colleague (Major Russell) was in Ireland. 
After waiting a reasonable time — there was no other way — I moved 
that the Right Honorable the Earl of Arundel do take the chair. 
His lordship did so, and matters proceeded to the close, when I 
moved a vote of thanks, which " passed unanimously " ; there was 
no seconder present, but that did not matter. The next morning 
there appeared in the Times a series of resolutions — put and car- 
ried in the usual terms and in the usual way, at that meeting of the 
solitary two ! 

I hope I may not be considered as guilty of deception ; my own 
conscience did not then, and does not now, reproach me. It was 
the busy month in London. I foresaw it was improbable that the 
noblemen and gentlemen I desired to associate with the movement 
could attend a meeting ; and I took the precaution to write to each 
to this effect : " If you are unable to be present, will you give me 
written authority to move or second in your name a resolution of 
which I inclose a copy ? " It is needless to add that in every case 
I did receive such written authority ; and I astonished Lord Arun- 
del not a little when I rose and said, " My Lord, in the name of , 

I move this resolution, and I hand to your lordship his written au- 
thority to do so." 

I believe the bare fact was known only to Lord Arundel and my- 
self, and certainly in Ireland the naked report made a strong impres- 
sion, producing exactly the effect I desired to produce, for I had 
adroitly mingled Protestant and Roman Catholic — Irishmen and 
Englishmen, and Whig with Tory. Among the " movers " and " sec- 
onders " were the Marquis of Lansdowne, Lord John Russell, and 
Sir Robert Peel. 

" Peace hath her victories no less renowned than War ! " 

Had the good priest led an army to the slaughter, and sod- 
dened the earth with soldier-blood, his reward for victory would 
have been thousands instead of hundreds, thanks voted by " both 

hardly make a meal, yet there were frequent patches from which they had been 
taken up. In more than one instance I saw a family feeding on boiled nettles. 
The next day I was dining with a gentleman — " a farmer of wealth and position " 
— on the mainland. Talking over the misery I had witnessed, he said, " And yet 
I can not say I have lost a single sheep on the mountain." My observation was 
prompt : " Lucky for you I am not one of your tenants ; if I had been, you would 
have lost many." 



GONE! FROM EARTH TO HEAVEN! 301 

Houses," and a title, to hand down to an effete or at best an un- 
earning posterity. For labors that saved to the nation millions in 
wealth and in lives, the recompense was small on earth. Adequate 
payment was postponed until the resurrection of the just. 

If Father Mathew had declined the Government ^300 per an- 
num — a course to which I, whether wisely or unwisely, counseled 
him — I am very sure a sum would have been collected from the 
British, Scotch, and Irish public, aided by Canada, Australia, the East 
Indies, and the other dependencies of the Crown, that — mightily 
swelled as it would have been by the United States of America — 
would have sufficed to purchase four such " annuities " as the tri- 
fling dole accorded to him. 

In 1849 he left Ireland for the United States. It is needless to 
say an ovation awaited him there, proceeding not only from his own 
countrymen, but from all American citizens, who, without exception, 
honored and loved him for the work he was doing and had done. 
Previous to this visit he had been attacked with paralysis. In 1852 
he was prostrated by a fit of apoplexy ; in 1854 he sought health at 
Madeira; and on the 8th of December, 1856, "he fell asleep." In 
a sense, it was literally " falling asleep " : the soul was withdrawn 
from the body without a struggle. The Apostle had become the 
Martyr of Temperance. He died "on the field of his glory," at 
Queenstown, anciently the Cove of Cork. 

A statue to his memory, executed by his countryman, the great 
Irish sculptor Foley, graces the city in which he did most of his 
work. His " remains " are dust in the cemetery where flourishes the 
foliage of many lands — the former Botanic Garden of Cork. 

A generation has passed away since Father Mathew's work was 
done ; yet there are some, still on earth, who remember him, render 
homage to his memory, and testify to the blessings of which he was 
the bearer to the country of his birth, and to all mankind. 

However much they may differ from the priest as to dogmas of 
creed, those of whom I speak would ask no better usher to the pres- 
ence of the Master after life is done ; and for myself, if, when called 
by death from earth, I were empowered to select from the many good 
men I have known the one who, above all others, I should prefer to 
lead me to the steps of " the great white throne," and show me how 
and where to kneel in grateful adoration, though I am not of his 
faith — but think it is my duty to oppose it, and all approaches to it 
— I should choose the humble Franciscan friar of Cork. 

If there was mourning on earth there was joy in heaven when 
the Roman Catholic priest heard the words " good and faithful ser- 
vant." He heard them on the 8th of December, 1856, in the sixty- 
sixth year of his age, and " the forty-second of his ministry." 



302 HIS LEGACY. 

Alas ! the blessing of Temperance in Ireland is but a memory ; 
the people of Ireland have forgotten its apostle and martyr, and the 
curse is almost as foul and fatal to-day as it was before that memo- 
rable morning of April, 1838. Not quite ; it never can be so ; for 
drunkenness instead of being a glory has become a reproach. That 
is, at all events, the bequest of Father Mathew to his country and to 
mankind, the value of which time can not lessen. The drunkard 
now, instead of brawling in triumph all the way from the public- 
house to his home, skulks through by-ways, and prefers that his 
neighbors do not see him. A gentleman drunk is now as rare a sight 
in Ireland as it is in England. Not quite ; a ban has been put 
upon the Vice ; authors do not describe it as venial, or jovial, or 
" glorious " ; artists no longer class it with the picturesque ; the pul- 
pit and the platform assail it with the language of abhorrence ; it is 
execrated as the mighty impediment to social and moral progress ; 
while the religious " of all denominations " beat it down as the barrier 
that outrages nature, leads from God, and infers a social hell here and 
the hell of remorse hereafter. Not quite ; legislation has aided 
public opinion to brand as well as to condemn the Vice. Not 
quite ; if there is much yet to do, much has been done ; chiefly 
perceptible, perhaps, to the old, who can review the past. Not 
quite ; a thousand societies of all " sorts and sizes," from the vil- 
lage few to the city throngs, combine to exhibit the height, and 
depth, and breadth of the misery thus engendered ; and a hundred 
publications prosper by exposing and decrying the misery thus in- 
duced — " fruits of the traffic." 

In addition : they may be rude and rough tools — some of them 
— that are working to-day under names that all of us may not like : 
but " Salvation Armies," and " Blue-ribbon Armies," and a score of 
bands under like titles, all war with sin, and misery, and degradation, 
and enlist recruits — every one of whom will be an aid to the state, 
and many of them disciples of true and pure religion. It is only by 
the unreflecting or the vicious that such soldiers will be sought to be 
disbanded. 

In short, it is easy to sum up and deliver to a jury consisting of 
all manhood, and womanhood, a charge against the tempter, the 
betrayer, the home curse, the disease-producer, the soul-destroyer, 
blighting, mildewing, ruining, wherever it obtains power ; the fiend 
that negatives all efforts to advance social progress and secure ma- 
terial prosperity, that balks the teachings of virtue, the guidance of 
religion — the revaled, and natural, faith in hereafter. 

The curse of drunkenness is the overwhelming curse of our coun- 
try — of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. It fills our poor- 
houses, insane asylums, and jails. It is the fertile source of crime ; 
almost the only source. There is not a judge, a coroner, a magis- 
trate, who will not tell us it gives him nine tenths of the work he has 



THE CURSE! 3 3 

to do. There is not a physician who has not testified to the misery 
it induces, and for which he has no cure. It is the existing, but it is 
also the hereditary curse. The children of the drunkard are recog- 
nized by emaciated forms, diseased constitutions, and predisposition 
to crime ! 

I fancy I hear the great yet humble Franciscan friar say again 
the words I have heard him say more than once, " Glory be to God ! " 
when a temperance band, headed by a cardinal in his robes, parades 
through the streets of London and another cardinal leads those who 
traverse the quays of Dublin : Glory be to God ! not only because 
they are continuing the earth-work Father Mathew did, but for other, 
and, perhaps holier, evidence they supply to all human kind — that 
persecutions for faith have ended. Cardinals in their robes march- 
ing at the head of bands of Soldiers of the Cross — pledged abstain- 
ers : cardinals in their robes which — forty years ago — they would no 
more have dared to wear than the crown and scepter they might have 
stolen from the regalia in the Tower ! 



RECOLLECTIONS 
OF AUTHORS I HAVE KNOWN. 

I can not here go over the ground I have fully trodden in "The 
Book of Memories" (published originally in the "Art Journal") — 
a series of biographies mixed with personal recollections.* The 
former — the purely biographical element — I shall exclude, while re- 
taining, as much as space permits me, of the latter : so that these 

* " The Book of Memories " received gratifying praise in nearly all the critical 
publications. I do not think it requisite to give extracts from them ; but I can not 
resist the temptation to print two letters — one from Thomas Carlyle, the other from 
John Ruskin — communications of which any author might be proud, and of which 
surely I am proud. 

" Denmark Hill, December 18, 1870. 
" Dear Mr. Hall: 

" The beautiful book is in every way valuable to me, deeply interesting in itself, 
with interest upon interest (like Lord Overstone's income) in all being true — and 
interest at triple usury, in being all truth of the kind it is most helpful to know ; 
besides all this it assures me that I am not forgotten by friends whose memory of 
me is one of the few things I still care for, in a very weary time of my life and heart. 

"Affectionately yours, 
" S. C. Hall, Esq." "J. Ruskin. 

" Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, 8//* December, 1870. 
" Dear Sir : 

" Two nights ago there came to this door a weighty volume which, on opening it, 
proved to be a splendidly beautiful one as well, and a most kind and welcome gift 
due to your friendly regard. 

" I have spent all my leisure ever since on the book, and find it altogether ex- 
cellent reading, full of matter strangely interesting to me. Several of the pieces I 
had read before : these also I have read again in the revised form : in fact, I read 
all, and only regret to think I shall probably finish it this night. How strange, 
how grand and tragical, these silent shadows of the Past, which were once living 
figures along with us in the loud, roaring Present, and whom we are so soon to join ! 
You have done your work with insight, equity, and charity. The book will be a 
charming guest at many Christmas firesides this year, and may promise itself a last- 
ing use to this and the coming generations. Many thanks — many thanks ! 

" Please offer my thanks to Mrs. Hall, and say her little pieces seem to me par- 
ticularly excellent, and have a kind of gem-like brightness, where all around them 
is polished and bright. 

" Yours sincerely, 
«' S. C. Hall, Esq." " T. Carlyle. 



COLERIDGE. 



305 



chapters will consist mainly of episodes — passages that, as being 
"personal recollections," will, I hope, more forcibly recall the men 
and women of whom they treat, and prove interesting to the reader. 
Some of the " illustrious " have died since that book was issued ; 
with others I have dealt in the divisions of this work to which they 
seem properly to belong ; others, whose domain was more strictly 
that of letters, I am now about to treat of in the chapters that will 
follow this brief introduction. I may premise that, Byron, Shelley, 
and Keats only excepted (the first named I have seen, the two others 
I never saw), there is hardly a man or woman distinguished in litera- 
ture and art during the century with whom I have not been brought 
into personal relations — ranging from the slight to the intimate. 

Samuel Taylor Coleridge — as I knew him in 1825. He was 
then a resident at the house of the Gillmans, at Highgate ; he had 
been their guest during nineteen years, and there he died on July 
25, 1834. Not very long ago I visited his grave, and saw, through a 
chink, the coffin that contains the remains of the earthly dwelling 
that tabernacled the great soul — 

" The rapt one of the godlike forehead, 
The heaven-eyed creature." 

He whose ashes are there inurned was truly called " the old man 
eloquent." Eloquent in his fullness of years as a champion of Chris- 
tianity, he passed away in the certain hope of a life to come, although 
in youth he had " skirted the howling desert of infidelity," and had 
been for a brief while a Socinian preacher. In a memorable letter 
to his godson he maintained that " the greatest of all blessings, and 
the most ennobling of all privileges, was to be a Christian," and his 
last will and testament ended with this passage : " His staff and His 
rod alike comfort me." 

He was a young man in 1793, when with Southey and Words- 
worth he became a Republican ; but, like his fellow-poets, he soon 
shrank from the associates by whom he was contaminated, and the 
principles by which he was for a while tainted ; and broke from 
their trammels in " avowing his conviction that national education 
and a concurring spread of the Gospel were the indispensable con- 
ditions of any true political amelioration." 

I was a frequent guest at the house of the good friends of the 
poet — the Gillmans. They were pleased to see me, and so was he. 
I had, at all events, the merit of being a good listener : and, whether 
he was alone or surrounded by his satellites, when he was pouring 
out his mellifluous talk, I should have as little thought of interrupt- 
ing him as I should of disturbing the song of a nightingale by sing- 
ing a ribald verse. 

There are few now living who can recall to memory the simple 
gatherings round the tea-table at Highgate : though simple they 



306 COLERIDGE. 

were glorious, being, so far as related to the central figure, truly a 
flow of soul. 

Mrs. Gillman usually presided. She loved the poet with a love 
approaching worship. I was a favorite with her : probably because 
I drew near the circle without considering myself one of the links 
that formed it.* 

In one of the communications of Coleridge to me I find the fol- 
lowing lines in his handwriting : 

LOVE'S BURIAL-PLACE. 
A Madrigal. 

Lady. — " If Love be dead — " 

Poet. — " And I aver it." 

Lady. — " Tell me, Bard, where Love lies buried." 

Poet. — " Love lies buried where 'twas born. 
O gentle dame, think it no scorn, 
If in my fancy I presume 
To call thy bosom poor Love's tomb : 
And on that tomb to read the line — 
' There lies a Love that once seemed mine, 
' But caught a chill as I divine, 
' And died at length of a decline.' '" 

Coleridge's marvelous power of "talk "has been described by 
many of his contemporaries ; it was an unceasing flow of melodious 
words, like honey, luscious to the taste, but with little power to 
nourish and strengthen. Yet it was impossible to listen without 
being entranced — without almost unconsciously tendering homage 
to that — 

" Noticeable man, with large, gray eyes," 

who spoke like one inspired. It was as Haydon wrote : 
" The lazy luxury of poetical outpouring." 

" Eloquent music without a discord ; full, ample, inexhaustible, al- 
most divine " ; so said Wilson. " He was," wrote Wordsworth, 
'■' quite an epicure in sound." 

It is known that Coleridge went to reside with Mr. Gillman (hon- 
ored be the name and reverenced the memory of that " general prac- 

* Mrs. Gillman presented to me the poet's inkstand, a plain and unpretentious 
article of deal, which I gave some years afterward to the poet Longfellow. She 
also gave me a tiny myrtle, on which she assured me the poet's eyes were fixed 
when he was dying : it stood on a table by his bedside. It is now preserved for 
me in the conservatory of a friend at Palace Gardens, knotted and gnarled from 
age, but still blossoming in its season : and often brings back to memory the happy 
visits I paid to the house at Highgate. 

The inkstand was, up to his death, a cherished treasure of the poet Longfellow : 
in nearly all the letters I received from him, he refers to it : it was always on his 
writing-table, and was pointed out to every visitor as one of the " treasures of his 
soul." 



COLREIDGE. 3 7 

titioner," a surgeon at Highgate), chiefly to be under his surveillance 
to break himself of the fearful habit he had contracted of opium- 
eating, a habit that grievously impaired his mind, engendered terrible 
self-reproach, and embittered the best years of his life. I may well 
use the term — self-reproach. He has himself called opium " the ac- 
cursed drug," and his helplessness to resist the craving for it "a 
hideous bondage." It was this "conspiracy of himself against him- 
self " that was the poison of his life. He describes his terrible habit 
with frantic pathos as " the scourge, the curse, the one almighty 
blight which had desolated his life " ; the thief — 

"... to steal 
From my own nature, all the natural man." 

He did, however, prevail in the end over the fiend that tempted and 
had long possessed him. 

I have known persons who pictured to me Coleridge in his youth 
— a boy at Christ's Hospital,* and when a young man at Clevedon. 
He was aged when I knew him. My recollection is so vivid that I 
can not fail in the portrait I draw. There was rarely much change 
of countenance ; his face at that time was overburdened with flesh, 
and its expression impaired, yet to me it was so tender, gentle, gra- 
cious, and loving, that I could have knelt at the old man's feet — 
almost in adoration. My own hair is white now, yet I have much 
the same feeling that I had then, whenever the form of the venerable 
man rises in memory before me. 

I prefer to any other portrait of Coleridge that which is drawn 
by his friend Wordsworth : 

" A noticeable man, with large, gray eyes, 
And a pale face, that seemed, undoubtedly, 
As if a blooming face it ought to be ; 
Heavy his low-hung lip did oft appear, 
Depressed by weight of moving phantasy : 
Profound his forehead was, though not severe." 

All his friends have pictured him as a man made to be reverenced 
and loved. 

* I heard this anecdote from a gentleman who was a school-fellow of Cole- 
ridge's. Coleridge was wildly rushing through Newgate Street to be in time for 
school, when he upset an old woman's apple-stall. "Oh! you little devil !" she 
exclaimed, bitterly. But the boy, noting the mischief he had done, ran back, and 
strove to make the best amends he could by gathering up the scattered fruit and 
lamenting the accident. The grateful woman changed her tone, patted the lad on 
the head, and said, " Oh ! you little angel ! " 

Can we not see in this simple incident the germ of that epitome of his soul — 
quoted again and again by all who advocate the cause of humanity ? — 
" He prayeth best who loveth best 
All things, both great and small, 
For the dear God who loveth us, 
He made and loveth all." 



3 o8 COLERIDGE. 

This is but a brief memory of him who — 

" In bewitching words, with happy heart, 
Did chant the vision of that ancient man, 
The bright-eyed Mariner " — 

him of whom De Quincey writes as " this illustrious man, the largest 
and most spacious intellect, the subtlest and most comprehensive, 
in my judgment, that has yet existed among men." * How rich is 
the legacy mankind inherits from the philosopher, the translator, 
the commentator, and the poet ! Yet, judged by the exceeding 
wealth of intellect with which Heaven had endowed him, how un- 
satisfactory is that legacy ! It is an old tale now — that of the high 
expectations formed of Coleridge and the imperfect manner in which 
his life's work fulfilled them. A mine of thought was in him, but he 
wanted the energy and perseverance necessary to make its full treas- 
ures available to the world. From time to time he would bring forth 
a brilliant sample of his mental riches, that by its splendor suffi- 
ciently attested the value of the ore within ; but he never could pre- 
vail on himself to bend his neck to the yoke of that patient industry 
which has earned greater fame for men much less richly gifted. The 
history of his life is a very mournful one. Manhood, that should 
have Drought to such a giant in intellect as Coleridge high hopes and 
earnest endeavors, was wasted in the sloth of a double bondage — 
that of his natural indolence, and that of his acquired slavery to 
opium. The first of talkers, he was among the least of doers. 
Under God's providence, and by means of the devoted care and 
friendship of the Gillmans, the more terrible of these two tyrants of 
mind and body was at last shaken off ; and Coleridge passed his 
latter years free from the influence of " the accursed drug." But how 
blighted a life had the great Thinker's been ! He had to look back 
on many years of mental darkness and bodily weakness ; to shudder 
over the memory of vain struggles to escape from the thralldom of 
the terrible vice that had possessed him ; to lament a long separa- 
tion from the wife of his youth, the Sara of his early poems. Those 
who cherish the memory of Coleridge will always love best to contem- 
plate the declining years of his life, a decline rendered serene and 
beautiful by the untiring devotion of the Gillmans ; but, alas ! it can 
not be forgotten that the bright sunset did not follow, as should have 
been the case, a still brighter day, and that it was the poet's fault 
far more than his misfortune that his best years were darkened. The 
richest ground will bear little harvest unless it be carefully culti- 
vated : the highest genius does not exempt its possessor from the 
need for industry and energy. Such is the moral that the contrast 

* The article concerning Coleridge I printed in the " Art Journal" and subse- 
quently in the " Book of Memories," drew from the son of the poet — the Rev. 
Derwent Coleridge — a letter of which I may well be — as I am — very proud. He 
wrote to me that he considered it the best biography he had read of his father. 



COLERIDGE. 



309 



between what Samuel Taylor Coleridge might have done and what 
he actually accomplished too sadly points. 

In glancing back over these pages I rejoice to note how many 
great men and women of the past have, if they did not foresee, fore- 
stalled the skepticism of the age in which the present generation 
lives ; forestalled it in this sense, that they have left burning words to 
impress on their successors the magnitude of the evil. The curse is 
rearing itself hydra-headed in our literature. Half a century ago, 
atheism dared only insinuate itself stealthily into literary refuse de- 
signed for the lower classes to read ; it has now assumed the propor- 
tions of a creed that is boldly advocated and openly taught. Public 
men are no more ashamed of being influenced by the black belief 
than they would be of some bodily ailment that caused them to limp 
and halt. I do not refer to the lecturers who appear on platforms 
with atheism as their stock-in-trade, but to those far more pernicious 
and dangerous writers who, affirming that they derive their alphabet 
from science, construct a volume of teaching that saps both faith and 
hope ; and that if it does not refuse to accept God as the origin of 
evil, at least denies to God any attribute of good. Those who seek 
to reduce God to the dimensions of an unloving, pitiless, almost me- 
chanical, power are as much atheists as those who deny His exist- 
ence. It therefore becomes the imperative duty of every writer who 
seeks to influence public opinion to do his very utmost to prevent the 
spread of a disease that may infect the whole body corporate — a 
moral and social pest, the spread of which would be more fatal to 
humanity than a famine that would blight, and a pestilence that 
would kill, the whole vegetable and animal kingdom. 

Sunday lectures for the people are now delivered by highly edu- 
cated men who avow themselves materialists and, if pressed, would 
hardly deny that they are atheists. Books are largely circulated the 
teaching of which is simply " eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow 
we die " ; that, except to man's laws, there is no responsibility be- 
cause no hereafter ; that morality is to be controlled by convenience 
or inconvenience.; that duty is but another name for will ; that 
right and wrong are convertible terms ; that, in a word, the only 
guide to follow is self — benefits conferred on others being so many 
deprivations of enjoyment that should be entirely one's own. I pity 
the man who believes in no future where he will reap the seed he 
has, in life, planted. True happiness can be derived only from the 
happier faith that he who does good work for man on earth will en- 
joy the fruitage in some place we call heaven ; that consciousness 
and memory and attendant reason continue to be ours when the 
sometime habitation of the soul is committed to its kindred dust. 

I repeat, I rejoice to record the encouraging and stimulating fact 
that by far the larger number of the great men and women I com- 
memorate in these pages were not only believers, without a shadow 
of doubt, in continued existence after death, but that nearly all of 



3io 



TALFOURD. 



them had firm faith in the revealed Religion, which is the key to the 
Hereafter, 

"... teaching in their lives 
The love of all things lovely, all things pure." 

He who teaches doctrines of skepticism to the unthinking and 
uninstructed is as guilty of conveying social and moral taint, as he 
would be of willful murder who flung poison into a well, from which 
a parish drew the water it drank. 

There are even worse crimes that some literary men, and, alas ! 
some literary women, perpetrate. Some there are who so picture 
vice and virtue as to make the vice seductive and the virtue repul- 
sive : and it is to be feared that to-day such writers find too many 
readers.* 

It was Voltaire who, contending for the impolicy of infidelity, said 
if there were no God we should be obliged to make one.f 

Sergeant Talfourd. — A very lovable man was Sergeant (after- 
ward Judge) Talfourd. Eloquent as a pleader — almost reaching the 
dignity of an orator in the House of Commons — a dramatic writer 
of a high order, and a graceful if not a powerful poet, he was en- 
deared to many who appreciated the genius and the man. I knew 
him as a valued writer for the New Monthly Magazine, from which, 
however, he withdrew soon after the retirement of Campbell, to fight 
under his banner in the Metropolitan. But his worth as an advocate 
became known, and he put aside the pen to take a prominent posi- 
tion at the bar. Dickens dedicated " Pickwick " to him, not only in 
acknowledgment of Talfourd's successful efforts to secure to " those 
who devote themselves to the most precarious of all pursuits " and 
to the descendants of authors after them, " a permanent interest in 
the copyright of their works," but as a mark of the warmest esteem 
and regard, and as a memorial of the most gratifying friendship he 
ever contracted ; in short, writes Dickens, " In token of my fervent 
admiration of every fine quality of your head and heart." 

* " Avoid the Skeptic : poisoner of the soul ; 
A life-curse taking from us faith and trust 
To prove that dust is animated dust, 
And that hereafter gives no place of rest, 
A social, physical, and moral pest : 
A thief of hope in death : a monster ghoul. 
But women skeptics are fair Nature's blots : 
Stars — but of which you only see the spots : 
Or trees that, foully cankered at the root, 
Bear only withered leaves and deadly fruit : 
Or streams polluted at their primal source, 
That run — a stream of poison — all their course, 
Social mistakes : a dull domestic dearth : 
Women who have no altar, have no hearth." 

f " Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudroit l'inventer." 



REV. EDWARD IRVING. 



311 



Talfourd was greatly loved by all who knew him : he was what 
Lord Chief-Justice Coleridge said of him, "eminently courteous 
and kind, generous, simple-hearted, of great modesty, of the strictest 
honor, and of spotless integrity." He died suddenly in court while 
in the act of addressing a grand jury, and delivering some weighty 
and eloquent words directed against the vice of Intemperance. 

Rev. Edward Irving. — Leigh Hunt called him " the Boanerges 
of the Temple." His friend Carlyle styles him " a memorable man." 
He is forgotten now, for he left earth in 1834 ; and his means of 
being remembered like those of the actor, died within him. Yet he 
achieved marvelous popularity in his day (I have seen Canning, 
Brougham, and Mackintosh among the congregation at his chapel in 
Cross Street, Hatton Garden), by " discourses opulent in ingenious 
thought, by originality and truth of purpose, by a style modeled on 
the Miltonic old Puritan, and by a voice one of the purest and pow- 
erfullest ever given to man." ' No preacher," writes Carlyle, " ever 
went so thoroughly into one's heart." He was dismissed from the 
Scottish Kirk (I quote the same authority), by " a poor aggregate of 
reverend sticks in black gowns sitting in Presbytery, who passed for- 
mal condemnation on a man and a cause that might have been tried 
at Patmos under the presidency of St. John." 

Yet there were not wanting those who decried him as a pretend- 
er, a hypocrite, and a cheat. But those who knew him best em- 
phatically depose to the honesty of his heart, the depth of his con- 
victions, the fervor of his faith : and many yet live who will indorse 
the eloquent tribute of his excellent and accomplished biographer 
(Mrs. Oliphant) : " To him mean thoughts and believing hearts were 
the only things miraculous and out of nature. He desired nothing 
in heaven or earth, neither comfort, nor peace, nor rest, nor any 
consolation, but to know the will and do the work of the Master he 
loved." 

He was the frequent guest, and much-loved friend, of the poet 
Coleridge. It was some time before his enforced withdrawal from 
the Kirk of Scotland ; while he was still astounding audiences, intel- 
lectual as well as crowded, and before the appearance of the strange 
manifestations known as " the Tongues." The rumor of his burn- 
ing eloquence and marked peculiarities had preceded him to Lon- 
don ; crowds, on his appearance in the Metropolis in 1822, nocked 
to hear him preach ; and finding that the Scottish clergyman was 
indeed something strange and startling, came again, and in ever-in- 
creasing numbers. Irving drew for a while the attention of men of 
all faiths — or of none ; but it was as a meteor that shoots across the 
heavens, and then is quenched in darkest night. Soon there came 
a time when the enthusiasm, bordering on extravagance, of the 
preacher provoked yet more extravagant responses from a devoted 
few of his hearers ; when to the Scottish Kirk Irving became a stum- 



312 



REV. EDWARD IRVING. 



Ming-block, and to the polite world of London foolishness. The for- 
mer cast him out ; the latter sneered at him, ceasing to throng and 
hear a preacher whom some called a hypocrite and others a mad- 
man, and whose peculiar eloquence had no longer the attraction of 
novelty. A brief season of mockery and persecution, and the sensi- 
tive nature of the man gave way. The disease that Edward Irving 
died of was, practically, a broken heart. 

Many men of right intelligence, sound judgment, and true piety 
indorsed the verdict concerning him of Chalmers, whose coadjutor 
he had for a time been, that he was " the evangelical Christian 
grafted on the old Roman ; with the lofty and stern virtues of one, 
he possessed the humble graces of the other." 

Although I have heard him preach in his church at Gordon 
Square, it was never my good fortune to be present at one of those 
exhibitions of " the Tongues," when suddenly one or more among 
the congregation would be — apparently without preparation — " in- 
spired " to utter sounds to which none of the listeners could attach 
any meaning — at least so far as to construe or translate. 

That many believed them to be direct inspirations I can not 
question, any more than I can doubt the words of the Apostle, St. 
Paul, concerning "divers gifts," among which he enumerated the 
" speaking with tongues and the interpretation thereof " ; or that on 
the day of Pentecost when dwellers in all the lands of the Roman 
world were, to their astonishment, addressed by the inspired eleven, 
" each man in his own tongue." 

The whole tenor of Irving's life forbids the idea that he could 
have been a hypocrite ; while it is quite as certain that he could not 
have been self-deluded, year after year — continuously ; and with him 
a very large number of men and women, educated, thoughtful, ra- 
tional, inquiring, who were well instructed in Scripture, and who 
conscientiously sought to discharge all that appertains to the duties 
of life. 

At the time to which I refer, Irving was in the prime of man- 
hood and of striking presence : tall, slender, but by no means at- 
tenuated, with strongly marked features of the Roman type, and a 
profusion of long, black, wavy hair that hung partly over his shoul- 
ders. On looking closely into his face, you saw how grievously its 
expression was marred by an obliquity of vision, amounting in fact 
to a decided " squint." It is said to have been in only one of his 
eyes ; but its effect was fatal to the claim that might otherwise have 
been advanced in his behalf of possessing an awe-inspiring mien, a 
countenance such as one might indeed associate in fancy with a 
Boanerges. 

His voice was usually loud and harsh, yet in its lower tones melo- 
dious. His preaching was more conspicuous for zeal than charity : 
for Irving, whatever his merits and defects, was emphatically a sol- 
dier, as well as a servant, of the Cross. He died young, little over 



LISLE BOWLES. 



313 



forty ; and it is certain the keenness of the blade wore through the 
scabbard. His limbs had grown feeble before time might have been 
expected to make them weak ; his features were wrinkled far too 
soon, and his trailing black locks were tinged with gray long ere 
Nature's ordinary date. I imagine him to have been a man " cut 
after the pattern " of John Knox ; but the age in which he lived did 
not favor philippics against special sins, such as gave spirit and 
power to the homilies of the Scottish Reformer of the sixteenth 
century. 

Godwin. — It would be difficult to find a greater contrast than 
that between Irving and Godwin. In persons, in manners, in feat- 
ures, in mind, in spirit, they were uttermost opposites. The free- 
thinking husband of Mary Wollstonecraft — whose union was the 
slender one of a love-bond, until, in later life, they took upon them 
the bonds of wedlock — was of awkward, ungainly form ; a broad, 
intellectual forehead redeemed a flat, coarse, inexpressive face ; 
his dress was clumsy ; his habits careless — of cleanliness at least. 
Lamb is said to have once interrupted him during a rubber of 
whist : " Godwin, if dirt was trumps, what a hand you'd have ! " 
To me, however, who had read " Caleb Williams," and had not 
read " Political Justice," there was much attraction in watching and 
listening to the author of works then so famous, now so rarely 
read. 

He was the close associate, if not the friend, of Charles Lamb, 
and I met him in the company of " Elia " more than once. But I 
remember him still further back, when he kept a bookseller's shop 
on Snow Hill. He kept it under the name of Edward Baldwin ; had 
it been carried on in his own, he would have had few customers, for 
his published opinions had excited general hostility, to say the least. 
I was a school-boy then, and can remember purchasing a book there 
— handed to me by himself. It was a poor shop, poorly furnished ; 
its contents consisting chiefly of children's books with the old col- 
ored prints, that would contrast so strangely with the art illustrations 
of to-day. 

Lisle Bowles. — I met at the dwelling of Coleridge the poet 
Lisle Bowles, of whom Byron wrote some deprecatory lines in the 
" English Bards and Scotch Reviewers " ; but I saw him afterward 
in my own house, and once in a street in London, where he said he 
was "like a daisy in a conservatory." My memory of him will be 
brief. It may be well commenced by copying a letter written to 
Coleridge by Charles Lamb : 

" Coleridge, I love you for dedicating your poetry to Bowles. Genius of 
the sacred fountain of tears, it was he who led you gently by the hand 
through all this valley of weeping, showed you the dark-green yew-trees, and 
the willow shades, where by the fall of waters, you might indulge an uncom- 



3H 



LISLE BOWLES. 



plaining malady, a delicious regret for the past, or weave fine visions of that 

awful future — 

" When all varieties of life's brief day, 
Oblivion's hurrying hand hath swept away ; 
And all its sorrows at the awful blast 
Of the archangel's trump are but as shadows past." 

Bowles was fourscore years and eight when he died — one of the 
canons of Salisbury. During forty years he had been rector of 
Bremhill, Wilts ; having so long watched zealously over the spiritual 
and temporal interest of his flock ; a good man and a good clergy- 
man. 

His poems are now as much forgotten as his sermons. 

He died in 1850. In early youth he was simple enough to in- 
quire of a printer what he would give for a volume of sonnets ? The 
purchase was declined, but they were afterward published (in 1789) 
and speedily consigned to the shelf. When they were well on their 
way to oblivion, it chanced one day that a young man named Robert 
Southey entered the shop, took up the book, spoke of it everywhere 
in terms of high commendation, and the consequence was a good 
sale. Forty years after, Bowles dedicated to the Laureate, a new 
edition, " to one who exhibited in his prose works, as in his life, the 
purity and virtues of Addison and Locke, and in his poetry the im- 
agination and soul of Spenser." 

And thus Southey wrote of him : " His oddity, his untidiness, his 
simplicity, his benevolence, his fears, and his good nature, made him 
one of the most entertaining and extraordinary characters I have 
ever met with." 

Odd he unquestionably was, and Moore, who knew and loved 
him, described him well when he exclaimed : " How marvelously, 
by being a genius, he has escaped being a fool ! " In absence of 
mind La Fontaine could scarcely have surpassed him. 

He was in the habit of daily riding through a country turnpike- 
gate, and one day he presented as usual his twopence to the gate- 
keeper. "What is that for, sir?" he asked. "For my horse, of 
course." " But, sir, you have no horse." " Dear me ! " exclaimed 
the astonished poet, am I walking ? " 

Mrs. Moore told me that anecdote. She also told me that Bowles 
on one occasion gave her a Bible as a birthday present. She asked 
him to write her name in it. He did so, inscribing the sacred vol- 
ume to her as a gift — " From the Author." 

I had the following story from a gentleman - farmer, one of 
Bowles's parishioners, who cherished an affectionate remembrance 
of the good parson. One day there was a dinner-party at the par- 
sonage. The guests and the dinner were both kept waiting by the 
non-appearance of the host. At last his wife went up-stairs to see 
what mischance had delayed him. She found him in a terrible " tak- 
ing," hunting everywhere for a silk stocking that he could not find. 



GEORGE CRABBE. 



315 



After due and careful search, Mrs. Bowles at last discovered the 
reason of the "loss." He had put both stockings on one leg. 

But all the anecdotes told of his eccentricities are pleasant, sim- 
ple, and harmless ; and Bowles the man was the faithful counterpart 
of Bowles the poet — pure in spirit, sweet of nature, and tender of 
heart — good rather than great. 

George Crabbe. — Bremhill, the vicarage of Bowles, was not far 
from Trowbridge, the rectory of George Crabbe. I knew also — 
not at home, but in London — that great poet and good man : 

" Though Nature's sternest painter, yet the best." 

But he was stern only in verse. His was the gentle, kindly nat- 
ure of one who loving God loved man, and all the creatures God 
has made. His early struggles, less for fame than the bare means of 
existence, may surely furnish a lesson and, in their result, an encour- 
agement, to those who labor for either through difficulties it might 
seem impossible to overcome. I met him more than once : on one 
occasion when he was the guest of his friends at Hampstead, the 
Hoares, the eminent bankers. It was, I think, in 1826. He died in 
1832. I recall his healthy-looking face as giving little indication of 
poetic thought nourished by lamplight : it was suggestive rather of 
country fare, country walks and communings with God, where the 
brow is fanned by breezes that have never been sullied by smoke. 

He was emphatically a good man as well as a good clergyman, 
who discharged laudably and effectually his duty to God and man. 
The last sentence he uttered on earth was a fitting finis to an hon- 
ored and useful life. The words were merely these, addressed to 
his assembled children, " Be good, and come to me." 

I may have stated elsewhere that we possessed Crabbe's ink- 
stand. It was given by Crabbe's son to Moore, and concerning it 
Moore wrote one of the best of his poems, the original of which, in 
the poet's handwriting (written partly in ink and partly in pencil), I 
gave to the poet Longfellow ; and in 1880 I gave to Longfellow the 
inkstand also. 

I was visiting Moore when I made a pilgrimage to Trowbridge, to 
the church in which Crabbe is buried, and to the marble monument 
over his grave. It is a work of the sculptor Baily, and one of his 
best ; yet I thought it too grand to be reared over the dust of one 
who was so thoroughly the poet of the poor, and I fancied a simple 
tablet to mark his resting-place would have been more in accord with 
his work. 

I need not tell again here the oft-told story of what George 
Crabbe owed to Edmund Burke, of the helping-hand stretched out, 
on the first appeal, to rescue the starving young poet from the gulf 
of despair and misery into which, after a long and brave struggle, he 
was hopelessly sinking. It was but one of many generous actions 



3 i6 CHARLES LAMB. 

that have made the memory of Burke shine on us, across the century 
that divides our epoch from his, with a luster more resplendent than 
even his matchless genius could confer. 

Charles Lamb. — Very often, Charles Lamb was one of the party 
at the residence of Coleridge, with his gentle, sweet, yet melancholy 
countenance ; for I can recall it only as bearing the stamp of mourn- 
fulness, rather than of mirth. Even when he said a witty thing, or 
made a pun, which he was too apt to do, it came from his lips (jerked 
out in the well-known semi-stutter) as if it had been a foreboding of 
evil ; certainly, his merriment seemed forced. Coleridge and Lamb 
had been school-fellows, and " fifty years friends without interrup- 
tion." Their school was Christ's Hospital. I forget which of them 
it was, who, well remembering the floggings obtained, if not earned, 
there, hoped the master would not be carried to heaven by cherubim, 
because being only heads and wings they could not be whipped on 
the way. The life of Lamb has been described as a " life of uncon- 
genial toil " (the greater part of it was spent as a clerk in the India 
House), " diversified by frequent sorrows." A terrible shadow was 
perpetually over his heart and mind. I can conceive that the awful 
scene of his insane sister, stabbing to death her beloved mother, 
seldom left his sight, and he may be pardoned for the " one single 
frailty " that did not lessen, but, on the contrary, increased, the suf- 
fering for the removal of which he resorted to the " bowl " that he 
vainly hoped would be filled from Lethe. There is nothing in human 
history more entirely sad than the records of the walks he and his 
sister took together, when in after-years, and when her brother's en- 
treaties had obtained her restoration to his care, Mary Lamb, as the 
cloud came over her mind, and she saw the evil hour approaching, 
would set out with Charles along the roads and across the fields, 
both weeping bitterly ; she to be left at the lunatic asylum until 
time and regimen restored reason, and he to return to his mournful 
and lonely home. 

I recall him as the American Willis saw him, " in black small- 
clothes and gaiters, short and slight, his head set on his shoulders 
with a thoughtful forward bend, his hair sprinkled with gray, a deep- 
set eye, aquiline nose, and a very indescribable mouth." He rests 
with his sister in the churchyard at Edmonton ; and some lines 
written by his friend Cary are inscribed on the tombstone above the 
grave. 

His person and his mind were happily characterized by his con- 
temporary, Leigh Hunt : " As his frame so his genius ; as fit for 
thought as can be, and equally unfit for action." But the most 
finished picture of the man is that which his friend Talfourd draws : 
" A light fragile frame, so fragile that it seemed as if a breath would 
overthrow it, clad in clerk-like black, was surmounted by a head of 
form and expression the most noble and sweet. His black hair 



CHARLES LAMB. 



317 



curled crisply about an expanded forehead ; his eyes, softly brown, 
twinkled with varying expression, though the prevalent feeling was 
sad ; and the nose slightly curved and delicately carved at the nos- 
tril, with the lower outline of the face regularly oval, completed a 
head which was finely placed on the shoulders, and gave importance 
and even dignity to a diminutive and shadowy figure." 

Procter thus described him : " A small spare man, somewhat stiff 
in his manner and almost clerical in his dress, which indicated much 
wear ; he had a long, melancholy face, with keen, penetrating eyes ; 
he had a dark complexion, dark curling hair, almost black ; and a 
grave look lighting up occasionally, and capable of sudden merri- 
ment ; his lip tremulous with expression ; his brown eyes were quick, 
restless, and glittering." 

Few men have had more devotedly attached friends. This is 
the tribute of Coleridge : 

" My gentle-hearted Charles ! for thou hast pined 

And hungered after Nature many a year, 

In the great city pent ; winning thy way 

With sad, yet patient soul, through evil and pain, 

And strange calamity ! " 

And these words were written by Robert Southey : 

" Charles Lamb, to those who know thee justly dear, 
, For rarest genius and for sterling worth, 

Unchanging friendship, warmth of heart sincere, 
And wit that never gave an ill thought birth, 
Nor ever in its sport infixed a sting." 

But did Charles Lamb ever pine and hunger after Nature as 
Coleridge fancies him ? Not if " Elia " himself may be trusted. 
Lamb's true home was London, and away from it he was miserable. 
When, after those thirty-six years of desk-work in the India House, 
his employers and he parted on terms honorable to both, the gentle 
essayist tried the charms of a rural life ; and, although he went but 
a few miles away from his beloved London, repented speedily and 
heartily that he had ever disturbed his Lares. Charles Lamb's gen- 
ius was not that of a lover of Nature : it was born of his love of 
men. He could not be happy away from the life of cities ; and the 
inspiration of his best essays is the " busy hum " of the metropolis. 
It is almost as difficult to think of " Elia " away from the great city 
that was the scene of his quiet toil, his fearful afflictions, his snatches 
of mirth — now cheerful, now whimsical — as it is to take from London 
the memory of Dr. Johnson. I, at least, can never separate Lamb's 
figure in my memory from the busiest haunts of busy London ; for 
it was in Fleet Street I first saw and spoke to him ; and there he was 
to my thinking so much at home that, had Johnson been then on 
earth and known him, " Sir, let us take a walk down Fleet Street," 
might have been an invitation often and heartily extended by the 
burly sage to the stammering wit. 



3 i8 PROCTER. 

Cary was one of Coleridge's frequent visitors ; I saw him at 
Highgate ; but he was more often seen at the British Museum ; 
where he had a position that gave him congenial occupation. His 
translation of Dante retains its place of honor on the book-shelves. 
Ugo Foscolo, than whom there could be no better authority, told me 
he considered it not only the best English translation of any foreign 
poet, but the best in any language. I recall him to memory as very 
kindly, with a most gracious and sympathizing expression ; slow in 
his movements, as if he were always in thought, living among the 
books of which he was the custodian, and seeking only the compan- 
ionship of the lofty spirits who had gone from earth — those who 
though dead yet speak. 

William Hazlitt. — I did not like Hazlitt : nobody did. He 
was out of place at the genial gatherings at Highgate ; though he 
was often there : for genial he certainly was not. He wrote with a 
pen dipped in gall, and had a singularly harsh and ungentle look ; 
seeming indeed as if his sole business in life was to seek for faults. 
He was a leading literary and art critic of his time ; but he has left 
to posterity little either to guide or instruct. I recall him as a small, 
mean-looking, unprepossessing man ; but I do not quite accept Hay- 
don's estimate of him — "a singular compound of malice, candor, 
cowardice, genius, purity, vice, democracy, and conceit." Lamb 
said of him, that he was, " in his natural state, one of the wisest and 
finest spirits breathing." I prefer the portrait of De Quincey : " He 
smiled upon no man ! " He was a democrat, a devout admirer of 
the first Napoleon ; and (I again quote De Quincey) " hated even 
more than enemies those whom custom obliged him to call friends." 
His was the common lot of critics — few friends, many foes. His 
son, a very estimable gentleman, is one of the Judges in the Court 
of Bankruptcy. 

Bryan Waller Procter — so his name stands in the Law- 
books, while to the Muses he is known as " Barry Cornwall " — died 
in 1874, a very old man, for he was born in 1790. In 1823 he was 
in the zenith of his fame ; his tragedy of Mirandola having been a 
great success. His first poem was published in 18 15. His earliest 
Helicon was the office of a conveyancer, and in the ungenial atmos- 
phere of the Inns of Court his imagination found fresh fields and 
pastures new. I met him frequently at the house of Coleridge. He 
was short of stature with little evidence of energy, but with a pe- 
culiarly gentle and contemplative countenance, such as usually begets 
liking rather than the loftier tributes poets receive from those who 
venerate the vocation of the bard. From the commencement of 
his career, his homage was paid at the shrine of the older poets ; he 
rivals them in grace, fancy, and sweetness ; but he has copied their 
conceits ; " preferring the quaint to the natural, and often losing 



PROCTER. 



319 



truth in searching after originality." Yet a sound mind, a rich 
fancy, an exquisite skill in dealing with words, and a pure style of 
versification, are found in rare and happy combination in the Lyrics 
and Dramatic Sketches of Barry Cornwall.* 

J. T. Fields thus refers to Procter : " The poet's figure was short 
and full, and his voice had a low, veiled tone, habitually." And thus 
Carlyle pictures him : 

" A decidedly rather pretty little fellow, Procter, bodily and spiritually : 
manners prepossessing, slightly London-elegant, not unpleasant ; clear judg- 
ment in him, though of narrow field ; a sound, honorable morality, and airy 
friendly ways ; of slight, neat figure, vigorous for his size ; fine genially rugged 
little face, fine head ; something curiously dreamy in the eyes of him, lid- 
drooping at the outer ends into a cordially meditative and drooping express 
sion, would break out suddenly now and then into opera attitude and a La 
ct dare?n la mano for a moment ; had something of real fun, though in Lon- 
don style." 

Procter was seen at his best in the house of his father-in-law, 
Basil Montagu, and his most admirable lady (25 Bedford Square). 
Basil Montagu is described by Carlyle as the most " royally courteous 
of mankind." A more perfect gentleman it would have been hard to 
find. He was the natural son of Lord Sandwich and Miss Reay, an 
actress, who, more than a century ago, was murdered by Mr. Hack- 
man, a clergyman, who was hanged for the murder. The wife, now 
the widow of Procter, to whom he was married in 1824, was the 
daughter of Mrs. Montagu by a former marriage. 

Procter was called to the bar in 1831, and in 1832 accepted the 
lucrative office of Commissioner in Lunacy, which he resigned in 
1 86 1. He was in prosperous circumstances all his life ; never under 
the influence of a malignant star ; and he lived to pass his golden 
wedding-day with one who was beautiful when young, and is beauti- 
ful when old ; and he had all his long life the best enjoyments that 
are derived from 

" Wife, children, and friends." 

I visited him in his retirement at Weymouth Street a short while 
before his death. Just sixty years there were between my first visit 
and my last. 

His daughter, Adelaide Procter, was on the high-road to fame, 
and indeed had to a great extent achieved it when she died in 1864. 
Her own renown owed nothing to the honored name she inherited : 
her early reputation having been made under the nom de plume of 
" Mary Berwick." I need scarcely add that Miss Procter's sweet 
and graceful lyrics have still a wide circle of readers ; and that she 
ranks high among our English poetesses. 

* Many of his best poems were published in the New Monthly during my editor- 
ship, under the title of " Leaves from a Poet's Portfolio." 



320 WILLIAM HONE. 

William Hone. — I may introduce the name of a man who shared 
with Cobbett the renown acquired by the issue of books that ran 
counter to a very large section of public opinion. But William 
Hone was not a member of " the House " ; the glory of sending an 
avowed Atheist into Parliament was reserved for a generation then 
unborn. I knew Hone when he sold, in a small shop on Ludgate 
Hill, the books he wrote. That was some years after he had ob- 
tained notoriety and popularity, chiefly through three remarkable 
trials in which he overmatched Chief-Justice Ellenborough and ob- 
tained verdicts of acquittal in each and all. He was too poor to 
retain counsel, and defended himself ; reversing the adage that he 
who does so has a fool for his client. 

He was in ill-health at the time, yet his defense showed an 
amount of resolute courage that exacted popular admiration, if it 
failed to obtain for him general respect. The Government, for it 
was that rather than the law, assumed the attitude of a bully, re- 
solved at any cost to convict. Public opinion was with the wrong- 
doer. Such he was, for the broadest latitudinarian can not defend 
his parodies of the Litany, the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Command- 
ments, and other publications that were rightly styled blasphemies. 

The three trials took place at the Old Bailey in December, 1817. 
On the first day Hone spoke during six hours ; on the second, seven 
hours ; on the third, eight hours ; yet he was in bad health at the 
time. Few are now living who witnessed the trials — probably not 
one of the thirty-six jurymen ; certainly not one of Hone's upholders, 
among whom were Sir Francis Burdett, Alderman Waithman, the 
Duke of Bedford, Lord Cochrane, and Leigh Hunt. 

After his acquittals, a public subsciption enabled him to remove 
from his small shop in the Old Bailey to somewhat better premises 
on Ludgate Hill. It was thence he issued, aided by his ally, George 
Cruikshank, his famous assault on the King, arising out of the 
Queen's trial ; and also one of the most valuable books of modern 
times, "The Every-day Book." But he never made head against 
pecuniary embarrassment. He failed as a bookseller, set up and 
failed as the keeper of an eating-house in Bishopsgate, and died in 
1842 in penury ; leaving a son and daughter, both of whom I knew. 
The son became a sculptor of promise, but has made no mark in Art 
History. 

I have bought books from Hone when he kept the bookseller's 
shop ; had coffee from him when he kept the eating-house ; and 
listened to one of his wearisome sermons when he turned preacher. 

Perhaps half a million of his famous " Matrimonial Ladder " — a 
terrifically bitter attack on the sovereign, George IV — were printed 
and sold, yet it would be now almost impossible to procure a copy. 

Hone was a small and insignificant-looking man : mild, kindly, 
and conciliatory in manner, the very opposite of the traditional 
demagogue. He must have read a vast deal ; there is evidence of 



ROBERT SOU THEY. 32I 

that in his memorable defences as well as in the books he edited and 
bequeathed as valuable legacies to posterity. These books contain 
very little indeed to which objection can be urged, either on moral, 
political, or religious grounds. It is clear that in later life he ab- 
jured much, if not all, hostility to those personages and institutions 
against whom and which in his earlier career he had directed his 
envenomed attacks. The evil he did was almost atoned for by the 
good he accomplished ; if the one is forgotten let the other be re- 
membered, and the verdict of posterity be recorded as " forgiven " 
on the stone that covers the dust of a very remarkable and, I believe, 
conscientious man. For the production of " impious and profane 
libels " he was rightly prosecuted, and if the Government failed to 
convict him it was mainly, if not entirely, because it assumed the 
attitude of the persecutor and oppressor rather than that of the ad- 
vocate of truth, virtue, and religion. 

I can not, after the lapse of so many years, recall the names of 
others who may have added luster to those glorious gatherings at 
"The Gillmans." The list I have furnished is, however, a suffi- 
ciently grand one ; and many will envy me the priceless privilege I 
so often enjoyed of mingling in the circle at Highgate, round the 
" old man eloquent " — a circle composed of friends who loved and 
honored him — who nightly hung upon his words. 

Robert Southey. — I knew Southey only in London, meeting 
him more than once at the house of Allan Cunningham. I wish I 
had known more of him, for in my heart and mind he holds a place 
higher than is held by any other great man with whom I have been 
acquainted. To me, he is the beau-ideal of the Man of Letters : a 
glory to his calling to whom all succeeding authors by profession 
may point back with pride. Not only was his life one of diligent 
and fruitful labor : it was marked by almost every manly virtue that 
may combine to crown a king of men. If we look at his public 
career we find it distinguished throughout by industry, energy, rigid 
integrity, and noble pride — the pride of a Sidney of the pen, whose 
aim before all things was to keep his honor stainless. We turn to 
his private life, and all we learn of it shows to us Southey as a de- 
voted husband, a judicious and affectionate father, a warm and faith- 
ful friend. Though he had to struggle, nearly all his own life 
through, with poverty, he was ever ready to hold out a helping hand 
to those whose struggles for fame were just beginning, or as in the 
case of Chatterton's sister, to tender generous and effectual aid to 
the unfortunate relatives they had left. He gave in such instances 
as those of the sister of the marvelous boy," of poor Kirke White, 
of Herbert Knowles, and in a score of others, not only the sympathy 
of his large heart and generous aid from his slender means, but that 
which in the case of a sorely-tasked and ill-rewarded writer like 



322 



ROBERT SOU THEY. 



Robert Southey implied benevolence still more active — the labor of 
his pen. To rescue Chatterton's sister from poverty he edited the 
dead boy's poems and published them by subscription, and some 
years afterward became the unrewarded editor of the poetical re- 
mains of Henry Kirke White. 

There have been men of blameless life and splendid virtues who 
have won the respect of their kind, but never their love. It was not 
so with Southey. On his memory we look back with a sentiment in 
which love and esteem are happily blended, and while we honor the 
heroic worker and reverence the Christian gentleman, the warmest 
feelings of our hearts are stirred as we recognize how great and lov- 
ing was his own, and we echo, respecting it, the felicitous words in 
which the author of " Philip Van Artevelde " described it as — 

" That heart, the simplest, gentlest, kindliest, best, 
Where truth and manly tenderness are met 
With faith and heavenward hope." 

I wish, I repeat, that I had known more of Robert Southey. It 
is one of my proudest and most cherished memories — that of the 
brief and limited intercourse I was fortunate enough to hold many 
years ago with this Bayard of letters — the literary knight sans re- 
proche. 

My remembrance of him is that of a form, not tall but stately — 
a countenance full of power, yet also of gentleness ; and eyes whose 
keen and penetrating glance had justly caused them to be likened 
to the hawk's, but that on occasion could beam and soften with the 
kindliest and tenderest emotion. His head was perhaps the noblest 
and handsomest among English writers of his time. 

Years after his death I visited Keswick, and stood in the bed- 
room where he died. I could almost have fancied that I saw him 
there, as I gazed round the room with feelings of reverence approach- 
ing worship. Was it altogether fancy? It may have been, or it 
may not ; I can not say ; but I was at the moment * recalling the 

* " Hast thou been told that from the viewless bourn, 

The dark way never hath allowed return ? 

That all which tears can move, with life is fled, 

That earthly love is powerless on the dead ? 

Believe it not !" 
" I never fear to avow my belief that warnings from the other world are some- 
times communicated to us in this : and that, absurd as the stories of apparitions 
generally are, they are not always false, but that the spirits of the dead have been 
sometimes permitted to appear. I believe this because I can not refuse my assent 
to the evidence which exists of such things, and to the universal consent of all men, 
who have not learned to think otherwise. Perhaps you will not despise this as a 
mere superstition, when I say that Kant, the profoundest thinker of modern ages, 
came, by the severest reckoning, to the same conclusion. But if these things are, 
then there is a state after death ; and if there be a state after death, it is reasonable 
to suppose that such things should be. 

" Robert Southey." 



ROBERT SOU THEY. 



323 



words of his friend Wordsworth, as they are inscribed on his monu- 
ment in the churchyard of Crosthwaite : 

" Whether he traced historic truth with zeal, 
For the State's guidance or the Church's weal, 
Or Fancy, disciplined by studious art, 
Informed his pen, or wisdom of the heart, 
Or Judgment sanctioned in the Patriot's mind 
By reverence for the rights of all mankind, 
Wide were his aims, yet in no human breast 
Could private feelings meet for holier rest." 

Born at Bristol on the 12th of August, 1774, educated at West- 
minster School and at Balliol College, Oxford, he in 1794 addressed 
to Edith, his after wife, a poem which contained these two lines : 

" My path is plain and straight, that light is given, 
Onward in faith, and leave the rest to Heaven." 

They embodied the principles by which his whole life was ruled 
and guided from the cradle to the grave. He was for a brief while 
a republican, but very soon settled down into one of the most loyal 
of subjects. When assailed in later life for his change of political 
faith, he made the apt and admirable reply, " I am no more ashamed 
of having been a republican than of having been eighteen." To 
call Southey a renegade is as justifiable as it would be to call the 
Apostle Paul an apostate. 

His home, during nearly the whole of his life, was at Greta Hall, 
close to Keswick, in Cumberland, and there were, in his lifetime, and 
have continued to be since he passed from earth, many pilgrims to 
that sacred shrine. 

As the mourners were gathered round the grave of Southey, two 
birds suddenly began singing from a tree close at hand. On the 
occasion of my own pilgrimage there, while I stood beside the grave 
in which they had laid the body from which the lofty soul had de- 
parted, a robin was singing from the branch of a holly-tree hard by. 
It seemed to me a fitting requiem for the dead, whose life had been 
so simple and noble, that sweet and happy song, and the more so 
because the bird was singing from a holly-branch, and he whose 
ashes rested close by had written of that shrub some beautiful and 
touching verses in which he prays that if his youth had been keen 
to wound, his gentler age — 

"... might be 
Like the high leaves upon the holly-tree." 

I looked over the scene, on which he had so often looked — that 
landscape than which " earth hath not anything to show more fair " : 
heard the church-bell whose summons he had so often obeyed ; en- 
tered the sacred building (it was a Sabbath-day, well chosen for 
such a pilgrimage), and was soon seated near the recumbent figure 
in pure white marble that preserves his features and their expression 



324 



WORDSWORTH. 



with such fidelity, and does honor to the sculptor Lough. I sat in 
the pew that had been his pew, and there worshiped his Master and 
mine, and felt thankful for the lessons so good and great a man had 
given to weaker men, who by treading in his footsteps drew nearer 
to God. 

As regards the writer, and not the man, his prophecy of himself 
has never been to the full realized : 

" In the memory of the past I live, 
And those who are to come my sure reward will give." 

The writings of Southey are but little known to this generation ; 
yet finer models no writer or thinker can have. " Of the pure well 
of English undefiled " Robert Southey freely drank and freely gave 
to drink. 

His quarrel with Byron is part of the Literary History of his time. 

Unhappily, the mind of Southey decayed before the body — as 
was also the case with Moore. Mrs. Moore has more than once 
described to me her utter woe when, as often happened, her beloved 
husband failed to recognize the watcher by his bedside ; and " Do 
you know me, dear ? " met with no response. In both cases it was 
softening of the brain " that carried the mandate of death to the 
body and fuller life to the soul. 

As I stood in Southey's library, it was not hard to picture him 
with the cloud upon his brain, lingering mechanically and hopelessly 
among his books, taking down one beloved volume after another, 
vainly searching for some dimly-remembered passage, and then mur- 
muring as he resigned the hopeless task, " Memory, memory, where 
art thou gone ? " There can be conceived no human calamity more 
pitiful. It is far otherwise now with Robert Southey ; decay of the 
brain-mechanism can never more dim the intelligence and cloud the 
soul. 

William Wordsworth was no longer living, or, more truly 
speaking, he had passed from the life that is but of a day — though 
in his case a day of the extreme length the Psalmist assigns to it on 
earth. He had passed from it to the day that has no night, and to 
the company of those who can not die — when I visited for the first 
time the many scenes of romantic loveliness or grandeur he has made 
famous for all time. I knew him only in London, where he was more 
than once my guest ; for among his admirers there were none more 
fervent than were we. I regard William Wordsworth — and I can not 
think I overestimate him — as taking rank next to William Shake- 
speare among British Poets of all the centuries. 

Some years after the time I chronicle I visited Westmoreland, 
alas ! not to look on him but on his grave. There he lies, as Words- 
worth should do, beside the quiet waters and at the foot of the 
mighty hills he so dearly loved. 



WORDSWORTH. 325 

Walking with him one day from my house in Sloane Street to 
Piccadilly I felt prouder than I should have felt if the King had 
been leaning on my arm. It was said of him that he admired his own 
poetry more than any other person could, and that he was continu- 
ally quoting himself. I believe he had that miniature fault. I may 
recall an illustrative anecdote. He was breakfasting with me,* and 
the topic of his exquisite poem on " Yarrow Revisited " in some way 
came up. He complained that Scott had misquoted him, and, taking 
from a book-case one of the Waverley novels, read from it the passage : 

" The swan upon St. Mary's lake 
Floats double ; swan and shadow." 

" Now," he said — and I shall never forget the solemn sonorousness 
of his voice as he repeated the lines — " I did not write that ; I wrote : 

' The swan on still St. Mary's lake 
Floats double ; swan and shadow ! ' " 

It was evidently to Wordsworth's mind a most serious subject of 
complaint. 

Tall, somewhat slender, upright, with a sort of rude grace, his 
movements suggestive of rustic independence tempered by the deli- 
cacy of high intellect — such was Wordsworth to outward seeming 
when I knew him. I wish it had been among the lovely lakes and 
quiet dales of Westmoreland ; but, as I have said, I only visited them 
after the poet had been removed by the only power that could have 
compelled him to quit them — death. He loved every stick and stone 
in the Lake District : mountain and dale, tarn and ghyll, placid mere 
and running brook, were all his dear friends : if dumb to the multi- 
tude, they had tongues for him, and inspired his own with much of 
the eloquent music in which he discoursed to the world of the ser- 
mons they had taught. Accustomed to gaze with a reverent and 
discerning eye on the beauties of Nature, he became her great high- 
priest, the interpreter of a book that is ever open for the whole world 
to read. He has left millions upon millions his debtors for benefits 
incalculable conferred on the whole human family. To him, per- 
haps, more than to any other poet who has ever lived, may be ap- 
plied his own expressive lines, commending those who were of his 
high calling : 

" Blessings be with them and eternal praise, 
Who gave us nobler lives and nobler cares, 
The poets, who on earth have made us heirs 
Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays ! " 

* I find from a note added to a poem he wrote that morning in Mrs. Hall's 
album that the date of the visit was the 14th April, 1831. To the memoir of him 
I wrote in the " Book of Gems " he thus made gracious a gratifying reference in 
a letter I had the honor and happiness to receive from him, dated December 23, 
1837 : " Absurdly unreasonable would it be if I were not satisfied with your notice 
of my writings and character. All I can further say is that I have wished both to 
be what you indulgently say they are." 



326 WORDS IVOR TH. 

It was in 1864 I made a pilgrimage to a district that may be em- 
phatically termed the land of Wordsworth, although other high souls 
have sheltered there. It was at Keswick, Southey worked so long 
and so well for mankind, laboring until he died in the calling of 
which he was so proud, and the dignity of which he upheld so nobly. 
At Elleray John Wilson threw aside the robes of the professor and 
donned the loose and easy garb that gave him the physical, and with 
it the mental, freedom he could not have found in a crowded city. 
It was at Grasmere that poor Hartley Coleridge sinned and re- 
pented, repented and sinned ; unhappy victim of a passion irresist- 
ible ; dying a self-inflicted death (for alcohol is no less a poison than 
prussic acid), when his genius was yet in the bud — with the prom- 
ise of glorious fruitage. He rests in the graveyard at Grasmere, 
" the churchyard among the mountains," where lies Wordsworth, and 
the grave of poor Hartley is shadowed by trees planted by the hands 
of the greater poet. 

From Ambleside, Harriet Martineau doled out her later and per- 
haps her wholesomest, because less masculine, thoughts. Close at 
hand Felicia Hemans had breathed the air that soothed the sufferer 
into content when the heaviest of her burdens was upon her, and 
gathered from nature a store of wealth to be distilled in the alembic 
of her high and pure soul into sweetest verse. Among these mount- 
ains and beside these lakes the giant-mind of Coleridge, for a time, 
drank in draughts of a healthier influence than opium ; and just 
outside Grasmere a fellow-victim to the baneful drug, De Quincey 
dreamed his wonderful dreams. In the Lake-land, too, the great 
art-reformer of the age, who is worthy to be ranked with the best 
and loftiest of poets (although his poems are not in verse), is now 
passing his days in work that enriches the world.* 

* That the change in the attitude of the reading public toward Wordsworth 
was no sudden and capricious revolution of feeling from indifference to worship, 
but a sentiment of slow, sure growth, the following anecdote may help to attest : 
One morning in 1S31, when the poet honored me with his company to breakfast, 
our talk fell upon his lack of popularity ; I, who was among the most devout of 
his worshipers, insisted that he had many more readers than he knew, and I 
showed him how I had myself become so familiar with his writings by placing 
before him a copy of Galignani's edition of his works, issued in a form, and at a 
price, that brought the whole of them within my reach. I expressed a belief that of 
that book many hundreds — probably thousands — were annually sold in England. 
That led to an appointment with a view to inquiry, and next day I accompanied 
him to a bookseller's in Piccadilly — a firm with the encouraging and ominous name 
of "Sustenance and Stretch." The sale in this country of the Galignani edition, 
as of all English reprints, was strictly " prohibited." I asked for a copy : it was 
produced. I asked if I could have six copies, and was told that I could. Fifty 
copies ? — Yes, at a month's notice. And further questions induced conviction that, 
by that one house alone, between two hundred and three hundred copies had been 
sold during the year. I believe Wordsworth was far more pleased to find that his 
poems were read than vexed to know it was in a form in which he derived no 
profit from their sale. 



WORDSWORTH. 



327 



Popularity in the ordinary sense of the term did not visit Words- 
worth until his best work had long been given to the world, and he 
had become an aged man. It was Leigh Hunt, I think, who said of 
him that he was emphatically " a poet for poets." If fame was tardy 
in crowning the brow of the poet, an inner monitor consoled him 
with the knowledge that his laurels were sure, and he awaited in 
tranquil certainty their coming — the day when his country should 
see him and hail him as he was. But especially, and above all, he 
was a good man : his example as well as his precept was lofty, pru- 
dent, holy, in a word, Christian : yet his deep-seated religious feeling 
was never obtrusive in its manifestations, never forced into Phari- 
saical prominence. 

The earthly pilgrimage of William Wordsworth began in 1770, 
and, lasting out the rest of the eighteenth century, halted at that 
peaceful grave among the mountains only when half of the nineteenth 
also was past. Of those fourscore years, the days, for the most part, 
trooped forward as peacefully as in fair summer weather, like feath- 
ers drifted from the wings of angels, the soft white clouds, float 
across the tops of the higher Westmoreland hills. A hermit — he had 
placed his hermitage in Paradise. Whether it were his humble white 
cottage in Grasmere village, or the somewhat more stately home of 
Rydal Mount, he had but to step to its gateway to see loveliness 
spread around him — such as few other scenes in England can sur- 
pass. Almost at his feet lay the lake of Grasmere, its one island 
resting among those quiet waters with a look of infinite peace ; close 
to him, hill rose majestically upon hill, like stairways sloping heaven- 
ward and carrying the pilgrim who climbed them high above even 
the faintest echo of the tumult of the world. 

To have lived among these scenes for the greater part of a cent- 
ury, and to have been gifted not only with the power of perceiving 
their beauty in its fullness, but with that rarer and more wondrous 
faculty, by virtue of which the brightness of the outer world is mirrored 
in imperishable verse, and lessons are drawn from it over which man- 
kind may be kept pondering for a thousand years to come — these 
benedictions of Providence, combined with the serene prosperity of 
his life, surely justify us in accounting Wordsworth the most fortu- 
nate of poets. It was his happiness too that, though fame looked but 
coldly on his youth, his life was so stretched out as to anticipate, in 
its latter days, the homage of posterity. The laurel denied him by 
one generation was placed on his forehead by the next. Crowned 
with years and honors he at length passed away, leaving in virtue of 
the magic of his poety this English earth of ours, and more especially 
the corner of it called Lake-land, forever — 

"... apparelled in celestial light 
The glory and the freshness of a dream." 

In a worldly sense, too, Wordsworth was prosperous ; generous 
friends came to his side and liberally and delicately tendered help 



328 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

when he struggled with poverty early in his life. All his domestic 
relations were auspicious and happy. Supplied, in the prime and de- 
cline of his years, with ample means — his pension, his laureatship, 
and his office as stamp distributor, combining to endow him with 
what, to one of his frugal tastes, was a rich portion of this world's 
goods — he never felt, as so many poets have felt, the influence of a 
malignant star ; never toiled for the bread that is often bitter to the 
high of Soul ; it was not his destiny to " learn in suffering what he 
taught in song," and if, in his youth, assailed by loud-tongued and 
shallow critics and neglected by an inappreciative public, the long 
career that the luster of celebrity brightened so late, was radiant with 
the purer light of an assured hope — the certain hope of immortality 
for the poet on earth, and for the spirit in heaven. 

I heard at the Burns Festival Sir John Macneil pronounce this 
eloquent eulogium on the poet William Wordsworth, and echoed it 
with all my heart and soul : " Dwelling in his high and lofty philos- 
ophy, he finds nothing that God has made common or unclean, 
nothing in human society too humble, nothing in external Nature 
too lowly, to be made the fit exponent of the bounty and goodness 
of the Most High." 

Harriet Martineau. — It was amid the scenes in which 
Southey, Wordsworth, and Wilson luxuriated, teaching the wisdom of 
virtue and the happiness educed from faith and trust in a superintend- 
ing Providence — in a beneficent and loving God — it was amid such 
scenes that Harriet Martineau lived the later years of her life, and 
died so recently as 1876, at the age of seventy-four ; although forty 
years before, and indeed all her life, she had been making prepa- 
ration for death, or rather arrangements to die ; " satisfied to have 
done with life " ; that was all, and looking forward only to extinction ! 

The great three wrote and lived to inculcate love, charity, hope, 
faith, duty to God, belief in God, trust in God, as preludes to that 
other commandment, " Love thy neighbor as thyself." Religion had 
no influence on Harriet Martineau : she not only ignored, but con- 
sidered it inimical to the well-being and well-doing of man. " Philo- 
sophical atheists " were her honored acquaintances and friends ; 
" free-thinking strength and liberty " seems to have been her motto. 
" Christian superstition was at last giving way before science," and 
she did her little best to push it down. She had a sort of dim idea 
of an assumed first cause of the universe ; but expectation of reward 
and punishment in the next world was, in her estimation, an air-built 
castle. Christianity she rejected. Fresh from listening to the most 
sublime of oratorios, she writes, " The performance of the ' Messiah,' 
so beautiful and touching as a work of art or as the sincere homage 
of superstition, is saddening and full of shame when regarded as 
worship." 

If she believed in a God, it was as much as her creed allowed 



HARRIET MARTINEAU. 329 

her. So early as 1829 she determined to study the Scriptures "for 
moral improvement" ; and in 1876 she wrote calmly of "sinking into 
her long sleep," having " no objection to extinction, seeing no reason 
to suppose that death is not actual and entire death." Her body she 
left by will to be used for the purposes of science ; to her soul she 
gave no thought ; of a hereafter she had no convincing proof, and 
therefore she gave to it no faith. 

It was a dismal close to an active and fruitful life : a close with- 
out evidence of any trust except trust in herself. 

Those who write in the hope that they may teach, will be reluc- 
tantly forced to quote this indefatigable writer — to warn and scare 
from treading in the path she had trodden from the cradle to the 
grave. 

It would be hard to imagine a more melancholy picture than that 
of an aged woman whose doubts are almost certainties that there is 
no after-life ; that the earth-work done by a human being can have 
no continuance ; that hope — weak and faint, or delusive and decep- 
tive here — does but cheat us when it promises a future ; that the 
elements which compose the body are again to be separated into air, 
and water, and dust ; that belief of the soul's immortality is a dream 
ending in a sleep from which there is no awaking. 

I do not say that Harriet Martineau utterly denied the possibility 
of a state of existence hereafter, but her belief (if she had any) was 
so faint that it proffered no consolation : it was so dim that it gave 
no light, supplied no comfort, never lessened the burden of care, 
sickness, grief, disappointment, or hope deferred. Yet she had a 
religion that in another she would surely have called superstition ; 
she was a devout believer in mesmerism, and had entire faith in 
clairvoyance, although she rejected spiritualism with a degree of 
bitterness approaching hatred ; she knew nothing about it, she had" 
never seen any of its marvels, and dealt with it after the manner the 
wise man shuns— of answering a matter before hearing it. 

Of clairvoyance she gives some startling illustrations ; she had 
faith that an ignorant girl could see her, describe her, and tell ex- 
actly what she was doing, though the one was fifty miles distant from 
the other ; but the miracles recorded in Holy Writ were to her so 
utterly incredible that she rejected them with contempt not un- 
mingled with anger. 

Her unhappy mental state induced a proportionate lack of ami- 
ability ; those who do not believe in the goodness of God can have 
no faith in the goodness of man. A woman without a creed is like a 
woman without a hearth — desolate. 

It is grievous to note that of her contemporaries she has rarely a 
laudatory and seldom a kindly word to say.* 

* Mrs. Opie and Mrs. John Taylor are among the "mere pedants." Lord 
Brougham was "vain and selfish, low in morals, and unrestrained in temper." 
Lord Campbell was "nattering to an insulting degree." Archbishop Whately 



330 



ELIZABETH FRY 



She was residing at the Knoll, Ambleside, when I was in that 
beautiful locality, but I was informed that she avoided receiving 
visitors, and I did not call upon her — a circumstance I afterward 
regretted, for she expressed to a mutual friend her vexation that I 
should have thus passed by her dwelling. 

I had met her from time to time in general society, and I was for 
a few weeks staying at Tynemouth while she was living there, and 
saw much of her then ; but it was when she was absorbed in mes- 
merism — a principle to which I was, at that time, strongly opposed. 
I should have been on that head more in accord with her if at Amble- 
side I had been one of her visitors. But I imagine we were not in 
harmony, and that we could have found few themes on which we were 
as one ; we were antagonists in almost everything. 

Her form and features were repellent ; she was the Lady Oracle 
in all things, and from her throne, the sofa, pronounced verdicts 
from which there was no appeal. Hers was a hard nature : it had 
neither geniality, indulgence, nor mercy. Always a physical sufferer, 
so deaf that a trumpet was constantly at her ear ; plain of person — 
a drawback of which she could not have been unconscious ; and 
awkward of form : she was entirely without the gifts that attract 
man to woman : even her friendships seem to have been cut out of 
stone ; she may have excited admiration indeed, but from the affec- 
tions that render woman only a little lower than the angels she was 
entirely estranged. 

Elizabeth Fry. — I find this entry in the " Diary of William 
Wilberforce " : " With Mrs. Fry in Newgate. The order she has 
produced is wonderful. A very interesting visit. Mrs. Fry prayed 
in recitative." That was in February, 1818 ; and Mrs. S. C. Hall, 
then a young girl in her teens, was of the party, under the guardian- 

" odd and overbearing, sometimes rude and tiresome, and singularly overrated." 
Macaulay " talked nonsense about the Copyright Bill, and set at naught every 
principle of justice in regard to authors' earnings. ... He wanted heart . . . and 
never has achieved any complete success." She considered that " his review arti- 
cles, and especially the one on Bacon, ought to have abolished all confidence in his 
honesty." As to women, Lady Morgan, Lady Davy, Mrs. Jameson, Mrs. Austin, 
" may make women blush and men be insolent " with their "gross and palpable 
vanities." Coleridge, she asserted, " would only be remembered as a warning : his 
philosophy and moralizing she considered to be much like the action of Babbage's 
machine. Basil Montagu was cowardly. Lord Monteagle " was agreeable enough 
to those who were not particular about sincerity." Urquhart had " insane egotism 
and ferocious discontent." Writing of the Howitts, she said they made " an unintel- 
ligible claim to my friendship. . . . Their tempers are turbulent and unreasonable." 
Frederika Bremer she accused of habits of flattery and a want of common sense, 
besides wanting to reform the world by a " floating religiosity." Speaking of Maria 
Edgeworth in 1832, she makes the assertion of " her vigor of mind and accuracy 
of judgment having given way under years and her secluded life." Maria Edge- 
worth lived many years after that time, and spent most of her residue of life in 
educating younger members of her family. 



ELIZABETH FRY. 



331 



ship of her friend Dr. Walsh, some time chaplain to the Embassies 
at Constantinople and Brazil. I compile these details chiefly from 
her note-book. "It was," she writes, "one of the many blessings of 
my youth that I was noticed by some of the holiest and best women 
and men who glorified the earlier part of the present century. My 
dear mother's accomplished mind and gracious manners never failed 
to attract and enliven in society, and the full and vigorous mind of 
my step-father — the only father I ever knew — strengthened that at- 
traction. 

" I saw that my good friend the doctor was amused at my nerv- 
ous grasp of his hand when the ponderous key turned in the huge 
lock, and I found myself imprisoned in Newgate among girls as 
young as I was, and probably as pure in thought — before their fall. 
Yet so oppressed with gloom was I that I would gladly have gone 
back, and, indeed made a weak effort to do so, which my friend 
gently checked, just as a door opened, and there advanced the 
plainly dressed Quaker, whose holy renown had taken possession of 
my mind for many days previous to my introduction to her. She 
smiled, patted me on my blushing cheek, and said, ' Thou art wel- 
come to Newgate, which thou wilt soon leave ; not so those who are 
standing by my side,' pointing to two women who had entered with 
her, one of whom was sobbing ; the other had a look of dangerous 
vengeance that made me shudder. I afterward found it was part of 
her plan so to couple the penitent and the inpenitent." * 

During one of my visits to Mr. Wilberforce I had the rare and 
enviable privilege to be introduced to his dear and honored friend 
Elizabeth Fry. Very recently I stood in the room in which she died, 
and offered homage to a sacred memory. She died at Ramsgate in 
1845. I passed an hour, pondering and thinking, in the room in 
which she left earth for the heaven in which she had to encounter 
no more tears and suffering, no load of oppressive guilt ; and where, 
I am very sure, she met many of the repentant sinners over whom 
there had been joy — led by her to the footstool of Mercy, taking 
precedence of the ninety-and-nine.f She was, as her daughter terms 
her, " a minister of the Society of Friends, and was a member of a 

* She wore then and always the plainest Quaker garb : Dr. Walsh told me this 
anecdote of her daughter. She was complaining to him that her mother would in 
no way conform to the habits of society. This was his comment : "Young lady, 
do you expect to be a better woman than your mother? " 

The sentiment was in my mind, although the words were written long afterward 
by my friend Mrs. Sigourney on the death of Elizabeth Fry, in 1841 : 
" Oh beautiful, though not in youth, 
Bright looks of sunny ray ; 
Or changeful charms that years may blot, 
And sickness melt away." 
f Well chosen as a theme for art by the accomplished artist, Mrs. E. M. Ward, 
was the picture of Elizabeth Fry administering comfort to the fallen of her sex in 
Newgate. It has been engraved. 



332 



ELIZABETH FRY. 



family made illustrious by good deeds — the Gurneys." Born in 
1780, from early girlhood she dedicated her talent and energy to 
trie service of God as manifested by service to humanity. From 
her birth she had sound training for " thereafter." Her special labor 
was not commenced until after she had become the mother of many 
children, but when once undertaken, and she had entered on the 
task of making a " prison a religious place," it was arrested only by 

death. 

" Fighting her way — the way that angels fight 
With powers of darkness — to let in the light." 

In 18 1 7 she had "formed a school in Newgate for the children of 
the poor prisoners," and was perpetually among them, praying — but 
also working. Such passages as these frequently occur in her dia- 
ries : " Half-naked women struggling with boisterous violence." She 
" felt as if in a den of wild beasts." 

In her evidence before the House of Commons she describes the 
dreadful sights presented, daily and hourly, on the female side of 
the prison — the begging, swearing, gaming, fighting, dressing up in 
men's clothes ; scenes too bad to be described — women sunk in 
every species of depravity. And this was barely sixty years ago ! 
But at that time the idea of introducing industry and order into 
Newgate was treated by the officers of the prison as visionary. Then 
a band of twelve good women became an Association for the im- 
provement of the condition of female prisoners in Newgate ; though 
when the sheriff addressed them with, " Well, ladies, you see your 
materials," the task seemed as utterly hopeless as would have been 
an effort to instill gentleness, forbearance, and loving-kindness into 
alligators of the Nile Yet these depraved and reckless creatures, 
stubborn against every gentle influence, and seeking to forget the 
shame and misery of their condition in frantic and shameless mirth, 
were only the natural products of the inhuman and scandalous law- 
code of that age. Our criminal code seventy years ago was drawn 
up in the very spirit of Draco — on every page was written Death. 

Though to reform prisons was the main object of her life, to 
which she devoted her energies, it was by no means the only good 
work of Elizabeth Fry. A more truly Christian woman never lived ; 
and surely the good she did lives after her. " There was about her," 
says a writer at the time of her death, " the quietude of a soul con- 
versant with high duties, and not to be satisfied with so poor an ali- 
ment as the applause of man." Wisely, she strove at once to induce 
repentance for the past, and to point the way to a future " newness 
of life." Kindly of nature, quiet of speech, strong in sympathy, 
generous in forbearance, wise in counsel, full of charity, she seemed 
to love — and I am sure did love — the erring sisters she taught. A 
conception of the joy that is felt in heaven over the sinner that 
repenteth, she impressed on the hardened as well as the still con- 
science-pricked offenders to whom she bore the message of pardon 



WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 



333 



and hope ; she proved to them, not only that " godliness is great 
gain," but that none fell so low that the hand of Mercy could not 
raise them up : and if she did not suddenly make saints of sinners, 
she laid the foundation of a happy and holy change throughout after- 
life, not only converting the pandemonium of a prison into a com- 
paratively tranquil nursery of better thoughts and heart-felt peni- 
tence, but changing into good wives and good mothers, in another 
land, many whose conduct had augmented the horrors of a jail — a 
jail such as Newgate was when she began her work. 

Landor. — Walter Savage Landor was born in 1775, and died 
in 1864, having attained the patriarchal age of eighty-nine years. 
Ranking high among the men of genius to whom the nineteenth 
century has given fame, his career as a man of letters points a moral 
indeed, but it is by snowing that vicious propensities are sure to 
produce wretchedness, for his misery was entirely of his own creat- 
ing ; his life was a perpetual wrangle, notwithstanding the advan- 
tages he inherited, and might have enjoyed, from the cradle to the 
grave — his many rich gifts of fortune and of nature. Handsome in 
his youth, of goodly presence when I knew him in 1836,* of great 
physical as well as intellectual strength, inheriting large property ; 
well if not nobly born, with natural faculties of a high order duly 
trained by an excellent education — these advantages were all ren- 
dered not only futile, but positive sources of evil, by a vicious dis- 
position, ruled by a temper that he himself described as " the worst 
beyond comparison that ever man was cursed with," but which he 
made no effort to guide, restrain, or control. 

My acquaintance with him, independent of meetings in general 
society, and chiefly at the receptions of Lady Blessington, was at 
Clifton, where he was, in 1836, living. I had daily walks with him 
over the Downs. He found me a willing, though certainly not a 
sympathetic, listener. I regret now that my lack of accordance with 
his political and social opinions prevented my taking notes of the 
matters on which he discoursed. Mrs. Hall was not so patient with 
him. One day he called upon us, and spoke so abominably of things 
and persons she venerated that she plainly intimated a desire that 
he would not visit us again. He was at that time sixty years of age, 
although he did not look so old ; his form and features were essen- 
tially masculine ; he was not tall, but stalwart ; of a robust consti- 
tution, and was proud even to arrogance of his physical and intel- 
lectual strength. He was a man to whom passers-by would have 
looked back and asked, " Who is that ? " His forehead was high, 

* A brief while ago (in 1882) I visited the house — No. 5 River Street, Bath — in 
which many of his long term of years were passed : it was his own, and he had 
avowed his intention to set fire to and burn it down — a threat which his neighbors 
verily believed he would carry out. 



334 



WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 



but retreated, showing remarkable absence of the organs of benevo- 
lence and veneration. It was a large head, fullest at the back, where 
the animal propensities predominate ; it was a powerful but not a 
good head, the expression the opposite of genial. In short, physi- 
ognomists and phrenologists would have selected it — each to illus- 
trate his theory. 

I do not mean to trace his career, or make note of the infamous 
principles that upheld the French Revolution as worthy of imitation, 
his reported and credited offer of a reward for the assassination of 
a ruling sovereign, or his open and ostentatiously declared hatred of 
"all who are in authority over us." He defended himself, indeed, 
against the charge of aiding and abetting Orsini, but it is certain 
that two of the later days of that wretched man's life in England 
were passed under the roof of Landor in the city of Bath. I find 
in the leading Bath paper of that period more than an insinuation 
that the counsel of Landor must have influenced the regicide, not to 
the very act it may be, but yet have had its share in inflaming the 
murderous zeal that led the assassin to the cowardly attempt on the 
life of the Third Napoleon. 

" Fierce and uncompromising " at Rugby, at Oxford (where he 
was rusticated), and throughout all his life, up to the shameful out- 
rage of decency at Bath, not long before his death he illustrated that 
passage of the poet — 

" And if some sad example — 
To warn and scare — be wanting — think of me ! " 

He was more than a republican. While yet a boy, it is recorded of 
him that he " wished the French would invade England and assist 
us in hanging George III, between two such thieves as the Arch- 
bishops of Canterbury and York." He was a Jacobin, upholding 
the more odious and execrable doctrines of the French Revolution, 
and standing by such of the English democrats as also advocated, 
encouraged, and upheld them. 

It is a dismal record, his purchase and occupancy of Llantony 
Abbey. Lawsuits and libel form its staple ; insult everywhere en- 
countered insult ; persecution and prosecution were met by their 
like. One of the most beautiful bits of South Wales became an In- 
ferno, and both his enemies and himself rejoiced when he quitted it 
forever. His muse was his lawyer ; he chastised his adversaries in 
Latin and in English verse. The disputes at Llantony were, as 
Forster calls them, " a comedy with a very tragical fifth act." 

In Italy it was much the same — " a discontented and repining 
spirit," burdensome to itself and wearisome to all. At Como, at 
Florence, at Pisa, at Fiesole, with very few exceptions, he made mis- 
ery for all who came within reach of his influence. 

There is one relief to this monotonous story of a degraded and 
dishonored life — his friendship for Robert Southey and Southey's 



WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 



335 



regard for him, that dated back to the time when Southey, as well as 
he, was a worshiper of the Goddess of Reason, whose foul lessons 
were taught and loathsome doctrines cultivated in France — trammels 
from which the one providentially escaped to be a teacher of public 
and private virtue, but that manacled the other down to the close of 
his life. Nay, there is another — his intense fondness for his little dog, 
Pomero. His greatest grief on leaving Bath was, that he could not 
take with him this dearly loved companion, friend. He was as well 
known as his master in that city ; and, as it is barely forty years 
ago, there may be some who remember both. They were insepara- 
ble ; the one had only " a better coat than the other." " Everybody 
knows him," wrote Landor, " and he makes me quite a celebrity." 
The man-friend survived the dog-friend, or there would certainly 
have been one earnest, true, and faithful mourner at the grave in fair 
Florence. 

In a very different sense from that of the poet I write of Lan- 
dor : 

" Nothing in life became him like the leaving it." 

In 1856 he had to meet a charge of libel ; the case was tried at 
Bristol, in August, 1856. Plaintiff was a clergyman of the Church of 
England. The alleged " false and malicious libel " was contained in 
a book called " Dry Sticks Fagoted by Walter Savage Landor," 
and grossly insulted the wife of the plaintiff, the Honorable Mrs. Yes- 
combe : her first husband was the son of a peer. The crime had 
been largely augmented by several anonymous letters written to the 
lady by Landor. These were read in court, but they were so disgust- 
ing that the newspapers did not publish them. 

The Bath Herald of the time describes the libel as a " purely 
diabolical invention," not only " mean, malignant, and venomous," 
but " utterly without foundation." An article in the Times of that 
day, in reporting the case — the charge against " a nasty old man tot- 
tering on the brink of the grave," has this terrible conclusion : 

" How ineffable the disgrace to a man of Mr. Landor's ability and repu- 
tation at the close of a long life to be mixed up with so disgraceful a transac- 
tion ! A slanderer — and the slanderer of a lady — a writer of anonymous let- 
ters, and these letters reeking with the foulest odors of the dirtiest slums — a 
violator of his pledged word — who is it to whom these words must now be 
applied ? 

' Who would not weep if Atticus were he ? ' ' 

The verdict awarded to the plaintiff damages of one thousand 
pounds. It was anticipated, and steps were taken to deprive the 
plaintiff of the benefit. It is shamefully discreditable to the parties 
concerned, that a plan was concocted to place the property of Landor 
beyond seizure for the damages — break up his house in Bath, sell his 
pictures, and remove him to Italy. All that was done ; but the reso- 
lute energy of the plaintiff defeated the project. He followed the de- 



336 FELICIA HEMANS. 

fendant to Florence, encountered the lion in his lair, served him with 
a sufficient citation from the High Court of Justice, the thousand 
pounds were per force paid, and Landor became by his own act a 
beggar. Not long afterward Browning writes, " Is it possible that, 
from the relatives of Mr. Landor in England, the means of existence 
could be afforded for him in a lodging at Florence ? " The means 
were found, but be it recorded to the honor of Robert Browning 
that it was by him funds were furnished at a time when they were 
absolutely needed. When he was wrestling with death in " fair Flor- 
ence," in 1859, Browning writes of him, "He forgets, misconceives, 
and makes no endeavor to be just or, indeed, rational. He is wholly 
unfit to be anything but the recipient of money's worth rather than 
of money itself." 

This dismal close of a long life was made more dismal by the af- 
fliction of poverty, augmented as it must have been by self-reproach. 
He had earned, if he had not deliberately worked for, the misery he 
was destined to endure. In September, 1864, he was laid in the 
English burying-ground at Florence, and the perturbed spirit was, 
so far as earth is concerned, at rest. 

Swinburne wrote a poem that may be accepted as an epitaph : 
" The youngest to the oldest singer." 

Another of the poets, Browning, as I have shown, gave the hoary 
sinner more effectual aid. 

Felicia Hemans. — In 1879 I visited, by no means for the first 
time, the church in Dublin where Felicia Hemans was buried, and 
the house, close at hand, in which she died, on the 16th of May, 
1835. The church, St. Anne's, is in Dawson Street ; those who de- 
sire to make a pilgrimage to the shrine, will have no difficulty in 
finding it ; they will read the lines by which it is distinguished from 
surrounding monuments.* 

" Calm on the bosom of thy God, 

Fair spirit ! rest thee now ! 
Even while with us thy footsteps trod, 

His seal was on thy brow, 
Dust to its narrow house beneath, 

Soul to its place on high ! 
They that have seen thy look in death. 

No more may fear to die." 

Again, I called to mind the picture drawn by her sister of the 
death-bed that closed a brief but very beautiful life : " The dark 
and silent chamber seemed illuminated by light from above, and 

* The vault that contains the body of Felicia Hemans holds also that of a faith- 
ful servant, Anna Creer, who died two years after her beloved mistress, whose faith- 
ful and devoted attendant she had been for many years, " cheerful and unwearied 
by night and by day." 



FELICIA HEMANS. 



337 



cheered with songs of angels ; and she would say that, in her inter- 
vals of freedom from pain, no poetry could express, nor imagination 
conceive, the visions of blessedness that flitted across her fancy, and 
made her waking hours more delightful than even those that were 
given to temporary repose." A short time before her death, she re- 
peated the lines : 

" Thou thy worldly task hast done : 

Home art gone and ta'en thy wages " — 

murmuring, " The words will soon be said of me ! " Let it be so. 
Yet her work seemed but half done ; she was barely forty-one years 
old. Who will doubt that it is continued in another — a holier and a 
happier sphere ? Hers had not been a happy life here. In her 
eighteenth year she married Captain Hemans, an Irish gentleman of 
good family. A few years after they were wedded he became a 
permanent resident in Italy, his wife continuing to reside in Wales, 
rearing and educating five sons who were born to them, working for 
her own and their honorable independence. The eldest son was 
George Willoughby Hemans, afterward the distinguished civil engi- 
neer. 

The reasons of their separation remain inexplicable ; and surely 
had now better not be inquired into. But it does not seem that any 
shadow of blame was attributable to the admirable woman who 
taught so much, and taught so well, in imperishable verse : no cloud 
rests upon her memory. That parting is a mystery, and must remain 
so. Yet there have been few women more calculated to win and 
retain the love of man ; being — as she was — handsome, gracefully 
formed, her personal charms considerable ; while her mind, at once 
of the highest and finest order, could not have failed to render her 
a delightful companion and a sympathetic helpmeet. 

Hers was that beauty that depends mainly on expression. Like 
her writings, it was thoroughly womanly. Her auburn hair, parted 
over her brow, fell on either side in luxuriant curls. Her eyes are 
described as "dove-like," with a chastened character that apper- 
tained to sadness. " A calm repose," so writes one of her friends, 
" not unmingled with melancholy, was the characteristic expression 
of her face." 

I must leave imagination to picture her widowhood all these sev- 
enteen years. " What is fame ? " she asks in a fragment found in 
her desk after her death. " What is fame to a heart yearning for af- 
fection and finding it not ? Is it not as a triumphal crown to the 
brow of one parched with fever, and asking for one fresh, healthful 
draught, the cup of cold water ? " At the distance of half a century, 
one may still hear in fancy her weary cry : 

" Tell me no more 
Of my soul's gifts ! Are they not vain 
To quench its haunting thirst for happiness ? " 



338 FELICIA HEM AN S. 

I never saw Mrs. Hemans at Bronwylfa, or at Rhyllon, her homes 
among the Welsh mountains, or at Dove Nest by Lake Windermere, 
the beloved scenes of her much sorrow, some happiness, and contin- 
ual toil. It was at Wavertree, a suburb of Liverpool, that I had the 
joy, which in memory is a joy to me now, of an interview with the 
estimable lady. But we had been frequent correspondents ; some 
of the most perfect of her poems had been published in works I 
edited, and a prose paper on the Tasso of Goethe she gave to me 
for publication in the New Monthly Magazine , in January, 1834. It 
is the only prose paper she ever published. 

I have a letter from Mrs. Hemans containing a poem — both in 
her handwriting. The letter contains these words, " not published and 
never to be published" The poem was written beside the death-bed 
of her mother : the lines are so touching and beautiful that I print 
them, although they have been published in the graceful edition of 
her works in seven volumes, issued by Messrs. Blackwood, of Edin- 
burgh. 

HYMN WRITTEN BY A BED OF SICKNESS. 

" Father ! that in the olive-shade, 
When the dark hours came on, 
Didst with a breath of heavenly aid, 
Strengthen Thy Son. 

Oh ! by the anguish of that night, 

Send us down blessed relief, 
Or to the chastened let Thy might 
Hallow this grief ! 

And Thou that when the starry sky, 

Saw the dread strife begun, 
Didst teach adoring Faith to cry, 

' Thy will be done.' 

By Thy meek spirit, Thou, of all 

That we have mourned, the Chief, 
Redeemer ! if the stroke must fall, 

Hallow this grief ! " 

I find among some letters, given to me by Geraldine Jewsbury, 
the following concerning the sad loss : 

" Affliction has fallen heavily on me — my mother's death. I was aware 
that she had long been in a very critical state, but trusted to her naturally 
excellent constitution, or rather perhaps not conceiving the possibility of 
being separated from her, I had clung to the hope each little gleam of amend- 
ment brought, and persuaded myself that these were far brighter and more 
frequent than was really the case. 

" Such life in this life can never be replaced. But we have cause to bless 
God for the recollections she has left us — for the cheerful submission to His 
will displayed throughout her long sufferings, and the deep tranquillity of her 
last hours. After a night of pain and sickness, during which my sister and I 



FELICIA HEMANS. 339 

had watched beside her, she fell into a slumber which we were so far from 
imagining to be the last, that we congratulated ourselves on its happy still- 
ness, and yet, with an unutterable yearning to hear her voice again, looked for 
the time of her wakening. 

" That time never came — she passed away from us in the very sleep 
which we had fondly trusted might revive her exhausted strength. Oh ! the 
feeling that all is indeed over ! that you have no more need to mix the cup of 
medicine, to tread softly, to hush the busy sounds of the household ! But I 
will not dwell on these things — I will endeavor to look beyond. She was of 
the pure in heart, who are sure to see God : and this is a holy consolation. 
My dear mother's age was only fifty-nine, therefore we might have hoped 
for many] more years of earthly union — I had hardly ever been separated 
from her, and all my children, except the eldest, were born under her roof. 
These things twine links round the heart, which to feel broken is for a time 
' to die daily,' but I thank God that I have been enabled to return, though 
mournfully, to the duties which so imperiously call me back, and that my 
sister also has been mercifully sustained in the performance of hers. 

" That exertion is of service to me — and she whom I have lost has left me 
an example of unwearied usefulness, which it shall be my ceaseless aim to 
follow. " Felicia Hemans." 

Some deeply touching and eloquently beautiful lines, " Stanzas 
on the Death of Mrs. Hemans," were written by Miss Landon, and 
published in the New Monthly, in 1835. (The original copy I had 
framed, and some thirty years afterward I had the pleasure of pre- 
senting it to George Willoughby Hemans.) I copy two of the 
stanzas : 

" And yet thy song is sorrowful, 
Its beauty is not bloom, 
The hopes of which it breathes are hopes 

That look beyond the tomb. 
The way is sorrowful as winds 
That wander o'er the plain ; 
And ask for summer's vanished flowers, 
And ask for them in vain. 

" Ah ! dearly purchased is the gift, 

The gift of song like thine ; 
A fated doom is hers who stands 

The priestess of the shrine. 
The crowd — they only see the crown, 

They only hear the hymn ; 
They mark not that the cheek is pale, 

And that the eye is dim." 

Miss Landon also laid a yet worthier chaplet on the shrine of her 
gifted sister. Her prose tribute to the character of Mrs. Hemans's 
writings is exquisitely beautiful ; but it is very mournful, as if she 
foreshadowed her own early doom, and saw the far-away grave that 
was to receive her before, as it seemed to us, half her earth-work was 
done. She quotes the lines of Mrs. Hemans that I have already 
referred to, lines as applicable to the poetess of the " Golden Violet " 



34Q 



THOMAS HOOD. 



as to her who sang of " The Better Land," and " The Graves of a 

Household " : 

" Tell me no more — no more 
Of my soul's lofty gifts ! are they not vain 
To quench its panting thirst for happiness ? 
Have I not tried, and striven, and failed to bind 
One true heart unto me, whereon my own 
Might find a resting-place — a home for all 
Its burden of affections ? " 

Seldom has a sweeter, tenderer, or more heartfelt tribute been 
offered by one poet to another ! She wrote to Mrs. Hall thus of the 
poetry of Mrs. Hemans : 

" Nothing can be more pure, more feminine, and exalted, than 
the spirit which pervades the whole ; it is the intuitive sense of right 
elevated and strengthened into a principle." 

" Ah ! " (she adds ; the sentiment strongly illustrates the tend- 
ency of her own mind) " ah ! fame to a woman is indeed but a royal 
mourning in purple for happiness ! " 

Thomas Hood. — " He wrote the Song of the Shirt ! " The line 
almost suffices to consecrate a lofty memory. He wrote it out of his 
deep sympathy with suffering, and knowledge of the bitterness of the 
bread that is earned by ill-paid and ceaseless toil ; for he was a suf- 
ferer himself, almost from the cradle to the grave, and his always 
broken health was more completely shattered by need to be a slave 
of the pen — to be merry on paper when debts and difficulties were 
the specters that haunted his every hour — to concoct jokes for the 
benefit of his readers in the intervals of release from bodily pain. 
Such a struggle was not likely to continue till " threescore and ten " : 
it brought Hood to the grave at the age of forty-six. 

When I saw him first he was in his prime ; when I saw him last 
he was on his death-bed ; yet his dauntless propensity for jesting was 
even then paramount. I do not know that it was so much inbred 
as that use had become second nature. But his wife herself told me 
of the well-known joke he made when she had been preparing a 
mustard-poultice to place upon his chest. He pointed to his ema- 
ciated frame and said, " Dear me, Fanny that's a monstrous deal of 
mustard to a very little meat." Yes ! flashes of merriment broke 
forth ; frequently when he was enduring physical pain and mental 
anguish. And we find him a sad and touching picture ! dictating 
from his dying bed matter for the printer which he had not strength 
to write ; while, as long as the wasted fingers could grasp it, his 
pencil was also active ; one of his latest engraved drawings for his 
Magazine (which unhappily was " Hood's Own," and brought no 
return) taking the shape of the " Editor's apologies," a plate of 
leeches, a cup of gruel, a blister, and three labeled vials. A few 
months later — for his struggle with death was long and painful — he 



THOMAS HOOD. 34I 

made the famous remark, " I am so near death's door I can almost 
fancy I hear the creaking of the hinges." Very painful must that 
neighborhood have been to him ; for, although the sunshine of celeb- 
rity was tardily beginning to brighten his path, he found little that 
was golden in its beams. Happily his last days were lightened and 
cheered by a pension granted to him by Sir Robert Peel. Honored 
be the memory of that great statesman and good man ! It is one of 
many acts for which he is now receiving his reward ; perhaps in the 
company of the dying poet to whose death-bed he bade comfort go 
and drive away despondency — not despair : Hood's was too brave a 
spirit for that ; but in passing away from wife and children, and 
leaving them heirs only to the poverty they had shared with him, 
he might well despond. No more kindly and timely aid was ever 
tendered, even by Sir Robert Peel. 

In acknowledging that debt, he could not resist a pun. " Given 
over by physicians and by myself ... it is death," he wrote, " that 
stops my pen, you see, and not my pension." He added, "God 
bless you, sir, and prosper all your measures for the benefit of my 
beloved country ! " And so, almost before fame had found the poet, 
death came for him. 

His admirable wife, the ministering spirit who watched over his 
death-bed, did not survive him many months. His son, the younger 
Tom, died when in early manhood (having established a reputation, 
inferior it is true to that of his father, but yet which that father would 
have learned of with pride) ; and his daughter, Fanny Broderip, is 
also dead. She left three daughters (to one of whom Mrs. Hall and 
I were God-parents). To the wife and the daughter the pension was 
continued ; the granddaughters do not need it, ample provision 
having been made for their future by the will of one of the brothers 
of the Rev. Mr. Broderip, the husband of Fanny Hood. 

Obviously, I could treat this sad yet happy theme at much greater 
length ; but the space to which I am limited enjoins compression. 
I will content myself with copying a brief poem that, according to 
Lysons, was inscribed on the pedestal of a bust of Comus in old 
Brandenburgh House, and that seems to come in very aptly in writ- 
ing of Hood : 

" Come, every muse, without restraint, 

Let genius prompt and fancy paint ; 

Let wit, and mirth, and friendly strife 

Chase the dull gloom that saddens life. 

True wit that, firm to Virtue's cause, 

Respects religion and the laws ; 

True mirth that cheerfulness supplies 

To modest ears and decent eyes." 

His was slow wit : it was neither spontaneous nor ready : the 
offspring of thought rather than an instinctive sparkle ; but it was 
always kindly, gracious, sympathetic ; never coarse, never " free," 



342 THOMAS HOOD, JR. 

never even caustic, neither tainted with distrust of the goodness of 
God, nor to rail at the ingratitude of man. His countenance had 
more of melancholy than of mirth, it was calm even to solemnity. 
There was seldom any conscious attempt at brilliancy in his talk ; 
and so far from sharing in that weakness with which wits are 
generally credited, a desire to monopolize the conversation, he 
seemed ever ready in society to give way to any who would sup- 
ply talk. 

No, not a mere jester was Thomas Hood. He made humanity 
his debtor, to remain so as long as there are men and women with 
hearts to feel and understand the lessons he taught. He was the 
poet of the poor, above all, of the poor who are women, and whose 
sufferings seem perpetual. Alas ! — 

" O God ! that bread should be so dear, 
And flesh and blood so cheap ! " 

remains a cry of as fearful meaning as when " He sang the Song of 
the Shirt," supplied an epitaph for the monument placed over his 
grave at Kensal Green. 

He entered into his rest, the rest that does not imply indolence 
or idleness, but release from the burdens of the flesh, freedom from 
temptations, bodily needs, despondencies, and dreads, and, with all 
this, a continuance of work in a holier sphere — on the 3d of May, 
1845. "Weary and heavy laden" all his life, he found "life in 
death " ; and his last words (I quote them from a letter written to 
me by his daughter), " breathed painfully but slowly," were these, 
" O Lord ! say arise, take up thy Cross and follow me ! " 

We knew the younger " Tom " intimately when he was child and 
youth ; but did not see much of him in his later years when he was 
the editor of Fun. 

He dedicated one of his books to Mrs. Hall. It had been her 
privilege to print his first poem : thus, as he said, " ushering him 
into the world." Poor fellow, his fate was not a happy one. Of 
late years, he avoided his friends, who saw little of him for some 
time before his death. He inherited largely the gift of genius of 
which his father had so much. Some of his poems might have borne 
the name of either " Tom." But he lacked early guidance ; at col- 
lege he was altogether without restraint, and being remarkably hand- 
some of person, with qualities that made way in " society," he was, 
no doubt, courted by the many who liked him, and it is little wonder 
if for a time he went astray ; contracting habits that certainly short- 
ened his life — a life full of promise. 

I do not think my readers will complain if I give, as a sequel to 
my memory of Tom Hood, Mrs. Hall's memory of our dear and 
much-loved friend, his daughter, Fanny Broderip. This it is : 



FANNY HOOD— MRS. BRODERIP. 343 

In what is now " the long ago time," Mr. and Mrs. Charles Dickens in- 
vited their friends to a juvenile party in honor of the birthday of their eldest 
son. Who would decline such an invitation ? Who did not know how the 
inimitable story-teller made happiness for old and young— his voice ringing 
out welcomes like joy-bells in sweet social tune, his conjuring, his scraps of 
recitations, his hearty sympathetic receptions pleasantly mingling and follow- 
ing each other, while his wife — in those happy days the " Kate " of his affec- 
tions — illumined like sweet sunshine her husband's efforts to promote enjoy- 
ment all around. It was understood that after an early supper there was to 
be '* no end of dancing." This was no over-dressed juvenile party, but a 
hilarious gathering of young boys and girls ; not overlaid, as in our present 
days they too often are, with finery and affectation, but bounding in their 
young fresh life to enjoy a full tide of happiness. 

We followed a crowd into the supper-room ; as boy and girl trooped joy- 
ously on, we perceived a thin, pale little maid, who had drawn herself into a 
corner, folded in her white muslin frock tightly gathered about her ; she 
seemed altogether unnoted and unnoticed ; indeed, she evidently shrank from 
observation. But we were attracted by her loneliness in the motley crowd ; 
so I laid my hand on her fair head and asked if she were not going in to 
supper ? 

She said, " No, there is no one to take me ! " " Where is your mamma ? " 
" At home nursing papa ; but Mr. Dickens told them we must come, it would 
do us good ! " " But where is your companion ? You said us." " Yes, my 
little brother ; he is such a merry boy and so fond of dancing, but he is too 
ill to-night. Yet papa and mamma would make me come." 

I took her little damp hand in mine. My love for children overcame her 
shyness. We speedily reached the supper-room and promptly found her a 
seat. It troubled her that I would not sit down ; and Mr. Hall made her 
laugh by the quantity he heaped on her plate. 

"Well, Miss Hood," exclaimed our host, "I see you have found friends." 

"Miss Hood!" I echoed. 

" Yes," she said, " I'm Fanny Hood, and my brother is Tom Hood, after 
papa." 

The young, pale, trembling little maid was the daughter of the poet whose 
" Song of the Shirt " was ringing its alarum throughout the world. How I 
longed to press that little girl to the heart she had entered ! Her large, soft 
eyes beamed into mine ; as she rose from the table she sought and found my 
hand, and said, " May I be your little girl for the evening? " 

All relating to Tom Hood had been faithfully chronicled^by his wife, chil- 
dren, and friends ; what I have to say only relates to her we have loved and 
lost — the Frances Freeling Broderip, whose " mortality " was laid in earth 
on the third day of " chill November," 1879, in St. Mary's churchyard, in a 
sweet spot under the shadow of the old stone cross, close to her residence, 
Ivy Bank in Walton Bay, Walton-by-Clevedon. 

Alas ! that one so young that she might have been my daughter should 
have left earth so long before me. 

She had resolved to relinquish for a time the income (her pension of ^50 
a year) she enjoyed, so that she might labor to keep her brother at college. 
She was going to live in a sort of farm-house. Oh, yes ! of course she would 
miss her friends, but it would be such a happiness to work for Tom ! And 
away she went. In a few weeks I had a charming letter, filled with violets, 
white and blue, and two or three early primroses. She praised the country ; 



344 



LADY MORGAN. 



it was very lovely ; and Tom had written a poem, which she inclosed. Had 
she not told me of his talent ? Yes, the neighborhood was lovely, but rather 
dull. Of course the gentry would not notice a young London girl whom 
nobody knew ; she did not care. But the place was sadly dull, nothing to 
relieve its monotony. By-and-by came another letter. Such a strange thing 
had happened. The vicar of the parish was a very amiable man. He had 
called on her. Observing copies of some of her father's books among others, 
he asked her if she was fond of reading, and did she admire Hood's poems? 
" At first," wrote my young friend, " I thought he was rather a reserved gen- 
tleman, but when he spoke of ' Hood's Poems ' he became quite bright and 
animated, quoted one of the most touching of his verses from the ' Bridge of 
Sighs,' but made a mistake, which I told him of, for I could not bear that. 
He seemed inclined to dispute the point : I produced the passage. He said 
he was so glad to find a young lady so conversant with his favorite poet. As 
I had lived in London I might have met him. With eyes full of tears I said, 
' He was my father.' I can give you no idea of the worthy man's astonish- 
ment and delight. He had fancied that my name was Wood, but felt it his 
duty as a clergyman to call on a stranger who attended church regularly. 
Since then I certainly have not felt Cossington dull. Nothing can exceed his 
attention and kindness ; some of his friends have called on me ; and instead 
of a forlorn damsel, I find myself a sort of rural lioness ! indeed, not having 
as much time as I want to devote to my especial purpose." 

After, very soon after, this information, came a short, a very short letter. 

The vicar had proposed to her ! How could she express her sense of 
God's goodness to her, or prove her gratitude and affection for affection so 
disinterested ? 

I had the details of the preparations for the dear girl's marriage ; in due 
time an account of their wedding tour, and of their greeting on their return 
to the vicarage — " her beautiful home." 

Hers was a beautiful nature — gentle, sympathizing, good. A worthy 
child she was of him of whom it is enough to say, " He sang the Song of the 
Shirt." 

I rejoice that one of the latest acts of my life is to lay a chaplet of re- 
membrance on her grave, and render this tribute to the virtues of my friend. 

Her many published books are so many " reflects " of her own life ; they 
are gentle, gracious, generous, kind. No relatives of her own were left to her 
on her brother's death, but the relatives of her admirable, excellent, and high- 
souled husband were her friends. They loved her dearly ; and one of them 
by a liberal bequest removed danger of necessitous circumstances from the 
home in which the three daughters live. May God bless and protect them, 
and continue to keep them worthy of their parents and grandparents ! 

I have but to add another fact to those I have narrated. It was my 
happy task to print, in a publication I edited in 1852, the first poem of her 
brother Tom — the younger " Tom." That is a pleasant memory. A yet 
more pleasant memory it is to know that the last letter my beloved friend 
Fanny Broderip wrote, was addressed to me. It was found among her 
papers after her death, and sent to me by my god-daughter. 

Lady Morgan. — I once said to her : " Lady Morgan, I bought 
one of your books yesterday. May I tell you its date ? " " Do," 
she answered ; "but say it in a whisper ! " 1803." It was not the 
first of her publications. She was an author when the century com- 



LADY MORGAN. 



345 



menced, and continued to write almost up to the period of her death, 
in 1859. She was born in 1783, in the sister island, from which, at 
the time of her death, she had long been " an Irish absentee," set- 
ting at naught the teachings of her previous life, and slurring over 
the fact that she deserved a share of the opprobrium she had heaped 
on sinners she denounced for a similar " crime." 

Ah ! she was a most pleasant Irish lady, proud of her country — 
so far as words went — and retaining a brogue to the last — the brogue 
that is never entirely lost. Why should it be ? Lady Morgan did 
not seek to hide hers — perhaps because she knew she could not. 

" Sydney Lady Morgan " — so she usually wrote her name.* I 
may describe her evenings, from the recollection of one at her house 
in Kildare Street, Dublin, so far back as 1822, and many at her 
house in William Street, Knightsbridge, where she lived long, and 
where she died. I would not say a word that might seem to cast a 
slur on the memory of one of whom much may be said in praise, if 
something must be said in censure. In Dublin " my lady " was the 
center of a coterie ; from leaders of society she received much 
homage indeed ; but it was the lesser wits of whom she was the 
worshiped star. Her large sympathy attracted many, and of em- 
bryo poets and artists in the shell she was the willing patroness and 
general helper. I myself owe something to her kindly nature ; from 
her I received, in 1822, a letter to the publisher Colburn. When, in 
1830, Mrs. Hall sought to recall that act to her memory, she had for- 
gotten it, but wrote, " Although the applications I receive from aspi- 
rants for literary fame are beyond count or memory, it has rarely 
happened that I have received such acknowledgments as your unmer- 
ited gratitude has lavished on me." f 

In 1837 she received from Lord Melbourne an annual pension of 
^300. The grant made her comfortable and independent ; so she 
removed from Ireland, and became, as I have said, an "absentee." 

Her easy-chair was her throne at Knightsbridge ; seated there 
she exacted homage, and received it — the queen of assembled satel- 
lites. Her youth had long passed ; but she sought to hide the knowl- 
edge even from herself ; her exact age was a secret carefully kept : 
from all letters, account-books, et coetera, dates were scrupulously re- 
moved. 

* Her father was an actor ; his name was MacOwen, which he changed to 
Owenson. 

\ I print one of many letters we received from Lady Morgan : 

"We have both — Sir Charles and I — read and admired your joint and admi- 
rable work on Ireland ; it is written in the true faith ! full of useful facts and 
characteristic details ; calculated to excite an interest for the country and its people, 
and to excuse their deficiencies and their faults by vivaciously ascribing them to 
third causes which your industry has detected through every page of the history of 
the " most unhappy country under heaven." I am charmed that the success of the 
publication has borne some proportion to its merits. 

"January 15, 1843." 



346 LADY MORGAN. 

Her artificial aids were many ; she was rather proud than 
ashamed of the " little red " that tinged her cheek. She never 
could have been handsome at any period of her life ; petite of figure, 
her form was anything but graceful. Yet her ready, if not brilliant, 
wit had given her, without dispute, leadership in the best society of 
the Continent — Italy and France especially — and afterward made 
her evenings in London exceedingly attractive. Her rooms were 
crowded with memorial tributes, presented to her by many great men 
and women, and she was pardonably proud of directing attention to 
them. Her rooms were small, and always overcrowded ; yet she 
managed with admirable tact to say a word or two to each of her 
guests. There was always an odd mixture — Poles and Russians, 
Whig and Tory, great authors and small, mature and embryo wits, 
the Papist of the south and the black Orangeman of the north of 
Ireland : yet, somehow, all behaved as if bound over to keep the 
peace, and I never witnessed there a quarrel that went beyond fierce 
and angry looks. 

That she was a vain woman no one doubts. " Why should I not 
be vain ? " she said to our friend Dr. Walsh ; " have I not written 
forty books ? " She had lived a long life of excitement ; it was the 
inspiration necessary to her existence, and she continued to breathe 
that element to the last. In April, 1859, she died, and was buried 
in the cemetery at Brompton. We were present at her last party, on 
the 17th of March (St. Patrick's Day) preceding. It was clear to us 
that her lease of life was an unusually prolonged one, for, born in 
1783, she was now seventy-six years old : yet she retained much of 
her vivacity, and all of that cordiality in word, look, and action that 
constituted her principal charm in society, and seems the natural in- 
heritance of her countrywomen of all grades. On that evening Mrs. 
Hall said to her, " Why, Lady Morgan, you are really looking very 
well." " No such thing, my dear," she answered ; " it's the rouge, it's 
the rouge ! " The last time she drew her pension, when it was nec- 
essary that a magistrate should certify to her being alive, she re- 
fused to see any one — a difficulty hence arose. It was met and 
overcome by a friend arranging to raise a sort of a row in the street, 
and posting the magistrate on the other side of it. She naturally 
went to the window to see what was the matter ; he saw her, and 
was able to sign a declaration that she was living. 

If toward her close of life the amor patrice was much less strong 
in Lady Morgan than it had been in earlier life, she was, neverthe- 
less, essentially an Irishwoman from first to last — in her natural gifts 
of kindliness, generosity, consideration, courtesy, and other qualities 
that constitute the charms of women and attract to them so often 
the devoted love of men — almost invariably returned a thousand- 
fold. 

Vain, gay, and charming to the last, Lady Morgan lived and 
reigned ; and the society in which such a reign as hers was possible, 



MRS. NASSAU SENIOR. 



347 



and over which she exercised a fascination more potent than that of 
beauty, like the brilliant Glorvina herself, has passed away. 

Mrs. Nassau Senior. — It was our privilege to know, and, with 
all who knew her, highly to honor, the estimable lady whose name 
graces this page ; she left earth (an irreparable loss) so recently as 
1877. She was the sister of " Tom Hughes," and wife of the Junior 
Nassau Senior. I extract from a tribute to the memory of Mrs. Nas- 
sau Senior, written on her death, by Mrs. S. C. Hall. Her claim to 
public gratitude is entirely her own. Few documents have been is- 
sued better fitted to be teachers and guides than that which bears 
her name — " A Report to the President of the Local Government 
Board on the Education of Girls in Pauper Schools." I make no 
comment on the marvelous industry the report exhibits ; to do any- 
thing like justice to the theme would be to occupy much space. 
I think it would astonish the hardest worker I have ever known. It 
is full of wise and practical information, given from " the woman's 
view," and so blended with gentleness, kindness, and considerate 
Christian charity, that it may be accepted as a model for all compo- 
sitions of the kind ; and truly, if the writer be in her grave, she has 
bequeathed to humanity a treasure above price. It is of considera- 
ble length, for it treats of every topic essential to, or illustrative of, the 
main subject ; if nothing was too high for her careful thought and 
minute scrutiny, nothing was too low for either. No topic in which 
the public is interested has been so thoroughly exhausted ; not a sin- 
gle point is left unexplained or without comment, while every passage, 
more or less, seems to have been written under the influence of the 
Divine text, "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy." 
This invaluable pamphlet-book is a huge volume of instruction to 
all persons and all peoples, who would promote the welfare of a very 
large class, scarcely less necessary to the comfort and well-being of 
the upper and middle classes than the air they breathe ; the atmos- 
phere of life may be made wholesome or unwholesome according 
to the regulation or neglect it receives, and our homes will unavoid- 
ably obtain much that augments happiness or increases its reverse 
according to the " bringing up " of those who are to minister to our 
lesser deeds — the domestic servants, who are, every hour of every 
day, necessities that enhance or impair the enjoyments, even the 
prosperity, of a household of any grade. From that most admirable 
report I could extract a hundred passages to act as guides and warn- 
ings ; and, I repeat, I know of no work of the class so intrinsically 
valuable as a legacy to all mankind. But that which especially de- 
lights me, and will delight all who read it, is the " pure womanliness " 
it exhibits on every page. That was what I expected to find in any 
production of a lady I am proud and happy to have numbered 
among my friends. A sweeter woman ne'er drew breath " than the 
good and gentle and accomplished woman whose loss, it seems to me, 



348 BARBARA HOFLAND. 

is a loss not only to her country, but to all human kind. Her ac- 
complishments were many and of a remarkable order ; her voice as 
a private singer was, I think, surpassed by no voice I ever heard ; it 
was exerted now and then to sustain some useful charity ; but it was 
always ready to gladden the domestic hearth. Yet that was among 
the least of her gifts. I have rarely known a woman at once so 
largely estimated out of her circle and so entirely beloved within it. 
She gave an example to all who might be influenced by it, that the 
duties usually described as public are by no means incompatible with 
such as are to be discharged at home. Those who are bent on doing 
good will always have time to do it, will never seek, much less find, 
excuse for the postponement or neglect of a task on which depends 
the happiness of others. I consider it a high privilege to lay this 
chaplet on her grave — the grave that hides the fair — indeed, lovely 
— form that enshrined so much of thoughtful care, persevering in- 
quiry, indefatigable labor for holy purposes, zeal tempered by dis- 
cretion, and wise work calculated, as well as designed, to elevate, 
and so to better humanity. 

Barbara Hofland. — Dear, good, sympathizing, unselfish Bar- 
bara Hofland ! Is she forgotten — is her admirable book, " The 
Son of a Genius," now ever read ? and is the collection of her works, 
advertised as the " Hofland Library " (she would not have given 
them that ambitious title), a collection for few or many readers ? 
They are principally for the young, and are all sound, healthful, and 
thoroughly good. Her second husband was the artist Hofland, one 
of the founders of the Society of British Artists. Miss Mitford thus 
characterizes her in a letter to Mrs. Hall : " She is womanly to her 
finger-ends, and as truthful and independent as a skylark." She is 
buried at Richmond, a place she dearly loved, and where she died, 
in 1844. A monument has been erected to her memory by a few 
loving friends. 

She was born at Sheffield in 1770, and was married to a manu- 
facturer of that town ; he died soon afterward, leaving one son, 
whom I knew, and who subsequently became a clergyman. She 
was left badly off ; but published a volume of poems by subscription. 
The proceeds enabled her to open a school at Harrogate. After 
living ten years a widow, she married the painter Hofland, and set- 
tled in London. 

The work by which she is best known, and that has gone through, 
perhaps, fifty editions, is "The Son of a Genius." It was published 
by Harris, once a famous bookseller at the corner of St. Paul's 
Churchyard, whose premises an excellent and liberal firm of pub- 
lishers now occupy. She received for the book ^10. It was so 
rapidly and frequently reprinted that the publisher made by it as 
many hundreds. I remember Mrs. Hofland telling me this — on the 
very day it occurred. She called upon Harris concerning a new 



CATHERINE SINCLAIR. 349 

edition, time (twenty-eight years) having exhausted his claim to the 
copyright, which consequently reverted to her. The worthy pub- 
lisher refused to acknowledge any such right, protesting against it on 
the ground that such a thing had never happened to him before ! 
The discussion ended in his giving the author, with a growl, an- 
other ;£io. 

I found among the papers of Mrs. Hall some notes concerning 
Barbara Hofiand, from which I give an extract : 

I have had the good fortune to know many of my highly gifted and highly 
honored sisters in literature — several more brilliant than Mrs. Hofiand — but 
none more free from affectation — more gentle or genial, more faithful as 
mother, wife, and friend, or more playful with, or tender to, the young. 
Children all loved and trusted her; she never paraded her own works ; and 
some of the best receipts I ever had in my young housekeeping days were 
from her big book. In all things she was so womanly ! 

Catherine Sinclair. — There is another whom we were proud 
and happy to rank among our friends ; she died in 1864, at the 
house of her venerable and most excellent brother, Archdeacon Sin- 
clair, also a laborer in literature, and unsurpassed in efforts to do 
God's work as a parish clergyman. Him also we knew well, and 
honored much as our pastor and personal friend. Catherine was 
only one of a distinguished family. Her father obtained a distinc- 
tion greater than even that he derived from the proud Scottish name 
he inherited. Many of his books, chiefly on agriculture, supplied 
information and instruction to a host of after-cultivators of the soil.* 
Among the third generation of this estimable family there are 
more than one who have come to the front in doing God's work for 
man. 

Catherine was very tall, and would have been handsome, as all 
her sisters were, but that her face was grievously marked by the 
small-pox. f Who that knew her did not mourn the loss of a true 
and loving friend when she was removed from earth to heaven ? Her 
admirable sister, Lady Glasgow (now also a dweller in the better 
land), wrote that she was " devoted without affectation, faithful to 

* Not very long ago I found among some old papers, a pamphlet on waste lands 
— presented to Colonel Robert Hall by Sir John Sinclair, Bart., in 1803. The 
subject was one in which my father had taken deep interest ; having formed and 
promulgated a plan for converting Dartmoor into arable land, by employing sol- 
diers to do the work when so many regiments (among others his own) were idle or 
disbanded during the treacherous calm that ensued on the brief and hollow peace 
of Amiens. 

•j- Are there many of the opponents of vaccination who can remember what I 
well remember, that is, a time when at least one woman out of every six was dis- 
figured, more or less, by the terrible and ineffaceable signs of the pest — with its 
frequent resultant blindness ? The matter is far too large, abstruse, and perplex- 
ing for me to enter upon here. I will merely observe in passing that nowadays 
you will not see one young woman in a thousand so marked by it as to impair 
beauty. 



350 



CATHERINE SINCLAIR. 



her Maker and her fellow-creatures, without guile, without an atom 
of literary jealousy, a woman whom it was a privilege and an honor 
to call friend ! " So Mrs. Hall reported of her in an article for 
which she received the grateful acknowledgments of Lady Glasgow 
and the good Archdeacon. Mrs. Hall wrote of her in these words 
(quoted by Lady Glasgow in a brief memoir privately printed).* 
She was claimed by all circles, the literary, the scientific^ the artistic, 
the fashionable, the philanthropic, the religious ; her large mind and 
quick sympathies finding and giving pleasure wherever she went ; 
young and old greeted her advent with delight. I have seen a fair 
girl decline a quadrille for the greater enjoyment of a " talk " with 
Miss Catherine. Gifted with quietness, simplicity, gentleness and 
refinement of manner, she had also a certain dignity and self-posses- 
sion that put vulgarity out of countenance and kept presumption in 
awe. She was gifted with a singularly sweet, soft, and low voice 
(" an excellent thing in woman "), with a remarkable elegance and 
ease of diction ; a perfect taste in conversation without loquacity. 

As an author, Miss Catherine Sinclair will be most frequently 
recalled by her two principal though by no means her only works, 
" Modern Accomplishments " and " Modern Society " : yet these 
volumes, full of wisdom and goodness as they are, afford very insuf- 
ficient evidence of the universality of her knowledge, and the depth 
and delicacy of her richly accomplished mind. She was a volumi- 
nous writer for the young as well as the old. A true Christian 
woman in all the relations of life as well as in her writings, she had 
the happy art (if an emanation from her own high and pure nature 
can be called an "art") of exalting the happiness and increasing 
the comfort of every house in which she sojourned — the house that 
she called her own above all others. 

Great as was her merit as an author, as a philanthropist, she had 
loftier rank in the Book of the Recording Angel. She gave to her 
native city, Edinburgh, among other useful gifts its first drinking- 
fountain, a boon to man, and still more a mercy to animals ; and to 
more than one charity she was a bountiful giver, out of the earnings 
of her fertile pen. Perhaps among the mourners who followed her 
to her grave in the vault of St. John's Episcopal Chapel, Edinburgh, 
in 1877, there was no group whose homage she would have more val- 
ued than that of the cab-drivers of the city. The Queen sent this mes- 
sage to her relatives : " Her Majesty was well acquainted not only 
with Miss Sinclair's literary abilities, but also with her constant, 
active, and successful exertions for the benefit of her fellow-creat- 

* I copy from this pamphlet an interesting anecdote. " Miss Sinclair conversing 
with the old Earl of Buchan, brother of Lord Chancellor Erskine, expressed aston- 
ishment at some instance of ingratitude." " Never be surprised at ingratitude," 
said the aged peer. " Look at your Bible. The dove to which Noah thrice gave 
shelter in the ark, no sooner found a resting-place for the sole of her foot than she 
returned no more to her benefactor." 



THOMAS MOORE. 



351 



ures." And there were few of the Queen's subjects who knew this 
good — even more than great — woman, through either her charities 
or her books, who did not echo the sentiment so graciously and 
gracefully expressed by her Majesty. 

Thomas Moore was born on the 28th of May, 1779, at a house, 
the lower part of which was then and continues to be a grocer's shop 
— in Aungier Street, Dublin ; and died at Sloperton, Wilts, on 25 th 
of February, 1852. 

On the 28th of May, 1879, a centenary gathering was held in the 
great hall of the Exhibition Palace, Dublin, to render honor and 
homage to his memory in the city of his birth. Lord O'Hagan de- 
livered an eloquent oration ; Denis Florence MacCarthy * had writ- 
ten an ode of great merit, which Chancellor Tisdall, D. D., admirably 
recited ; and there was a large assembly to hear and to applaud. 

This paragraph contains nearly as much as can be said on the 
subject. Of all the magnates of the city and country, there was not 
one present, if I except the Lord Mayor. No leader of any profes- 
sion was there ; no representative of " the Castle " came ; no Fellow 
of the University ; nor was there a single military officer of rank ; 
no judge left the Bench to be in attendance ; no eminent physician 
quitted his patient's sick-room to join in the tribute ; and if there 
was among the throng a single member of Parliament, he did not 
" show " ; while if a solitary peer, with the exception of Lord 
O'Hagan, were of the worshipers, he certainly did not grace the 
platform. And the men and women of letters — where were they ? 
How many did England, Scotland, and Wales contribute to the 
gathering ? Where was the native produce in Literature, Science, 
and the Arts ? Florence MacCarthy represented the genius of Erin, 
and I was, alas, the only representative of England. Rarely was 
more emphatic illustration given to the sentence, " A prophet is not 
without honor, save in his own country." While a Scottish man is, 
so to speak, born to an annuity, for his countrymen ever lend him a 
helping hand, and consider that on them is reflected some portion — 
though it be but a tiny ray — of the fame he achieves, it is piteous, 
yet true to declare of Ireland that with its natives the case is re- 
versed : their countrymen not only take no pride in, but even seem 

* Denis Florence MacCarthy has since died. It may suffice as a record of him 
here if I copy a paragraph from my response to a circular informing me of a pro- 
posed tribute to the memory of an eminent poet and excellent man : 

" It can not but be a melancholy satisfaction to me to contribute to a memorial 
that will commemorate, not only the lofty genius, but the social and moral worth 
of one of the truest poets and best men it has been my lot personally to know, 
esteem, regard, and honor — the late Denis Florence MacCarthy. Such men do 
honor to your countiy. It is well that they should be remembered after they have 
left earth : their works live for generations to come, and will claim the gratitude 
of thousands upon thousands yet unborn. I rejoice that Ireland will make record 
of another of the many worthies of whom she is wisely, rightly, and justly proud." 



352 THOMAS MOORE. 

to grudge them, the renown they win. Moore, in the latter part of 
his life at least, knew and bitterly felt that dismal truth. 

The sight was humiliating ; it gave me, though an Englishman, a 
keen pang as I looked about me in utter astonishment : and that 
day has been a mournful memory to me ever since. Patriotism is a 
sound that has no significance in Ireland, and the poetry of Moore 
has found greater fame in every other country of the world than it 
has in his own. The reason is plain : he was, so to speak, of two 
parties, yet of neither ; the one could not forgive his early aspira- 
tions for liberty, uttered in imperishable verse ; the other could not 
pardon what they called his desertion of their cause, when he saw 
that England was willing to do, and was doing, " justice to Ireland." 
Moore was the eloquent advocate of his country when it was op- 
pressed, goaded, and socially enthralled, but when time and enlight- 
ened policy had removed all distinctions between the Irishman and 
the Englishman, between the Protestant and the Roman Catholic, his 
muse was silent, because content ; nay, he protested in emphatic 
verse against a continued agitation that retarded her progress when 
her claims were admitted, her rights acknowledged, and her wrongs 
redressed. 

These are the impressive words of Baron O'Hagan : " It is the 
sorrow and the shame of Ireland — proverbially incuriosa suorum — 
that she has been heretofore too much in this respect an exception 
among the civilized kingdoms of the earth. And the sorrow and 
the shame have not been less because she has been the parent of 
many famous men — of thinkers and poets, and patriots, and warriors, 
and statesmen — whose memory should be to her a precious heritage, 
and of many of whom she might speak in the language of the Flor- 
entine of old : 

' Tanto nomini nulla par eulogia.' " 

As Moore wrote, " There are those who identify nationality with 
treason, and who see in every effort for Ireland a system of hostility 
toward England." " Rantipoles " is the mild term he applies to 
them in a letter to me. To say that Ireland is benefited when Eng- 
land is injured, he knew to be a willful and wicked perversion of 
truth. 

This is my portrait of Moore as I recall him to mind at Sloper- 
ton in 1845, when it was our honor and happiness to spend a week 
with him at his humble cottage, not far from lordly Bowood, the 
seat of his friend the Marquis of Lansdowne.* 

* Our intercourse was the result of his having quoted, in his " History of Ire- 
land," some stanzas from a poem I had written, entitled " Jerpoint Abbey" — pri- 
vately and anonymously printed in 1822. These stanzas may be found in the third 
volume of the " History " by any person who thinks it worth while to look for 
them. It was not a little gratifying to a young author to find Moore describing 
this poem, by one of whom he knew nothing, as " a poem of considerable merit." 



THOMAS MOORE. 



353 



The poet was then in his sixty-fifth year, and had in a great 
measure retired from actual labor ; indeed, it soon became evident 
to us that the faculty for continuous toil no longer existed. Hap- 
pily, it was not absolutely needed, for to meet very limited wants 
there was a sufficiency — a bare sufficiency, however, since there were 
no means available to procure either the elegancies or the luxuries 
which so frequently become necessaries, and a longing for which 
might have been excused in one who had been the friend of peers 
and the associate of princes. 

I had daily walks with him at Sloperton during our brief visit 
along his " terrace-walk " ; I listening, he talking — now and then 
asking questions, but rarely speaking of himself or his books. In- 
deed, the only one of his poems to which he made any special refer- 
ence was the " Lines on the Death of Sheridan," of which he said, 
" That is one of the few things I have written of which I am really 
proud." 

I recall him at this moment — his small form and intellectual face 
rich in expression, and that expression the sweetest, the most gentle, 
and the kindliest. He had still in age the same bright and clear eye, 
the same gracious smile, the same suave and winning manner I had 
noticed as the attributes of what might in comparison be styled his 
youth [I have stated I knew him as long ago as 182 1*], a forehead 
not remarkably broad or high, but singularly impressive, firm, and full, 
with the organs of music and gayety large, and those of benevolence 
and veneration greatly preponderating. The nose, as observed in all 
his portraits, was somewhat upturned. Standing or sitting, his head 
was invariably upraised, owing, perhaps, mainly to his shortness of 
stature. He had so much bodily activity as to give him the attribute 
of restlessness, and no doubt that usual accompaniment of genius 
was eminently a characteristic of his. His hair was, at the time I 
speak of, thin and very gray, and he wore his hat with the jaunty air 
that has been often remarked as a peculiarity of the Irish. In dress, 
although far from slovenly, he was by no means precise. He had 
but little voice, yet he sang with a depth of sweetness that charmed 
all hearers ; it was true melody, and told upon the heart as well as 
the ear. No doubt much of this charm was derived from associa- 
tion, for it was only his own melodies he sang. It would be difficult 
to describe the effect of his singing. I remember Letitia Landon 

* Nearly sixty-two years have passed since that evening. The poet was then 
in the zenith of his fame. To the party at which I met him I was taken by the 
Rev. Charles Maturin. I had made some little reputation in Dublin by a poem I 
had published on the visit of George IV to Ireland. Moore's father, mother, and 
sister were present. When he was leaving the room, I addressed him: "Sir, 
may I have the honor to take your hand?" "Certainly, young gentleman," he 
said, and shook hands with me. I dropped on one knee and kissed the hand he 
gave me. I related the circumstance to Moore many years afterward : he recol- 
lected it perfectly, saying he had often wondered what had become of the young 
enthusiast 

23 



354 



THOMAS MOORE. 



saying to me, it conveyed an idea of what a mermaid's song might 
be. Thrice I heard him sing " As a beam o'er the face of the waters 
may glow," once in 182 1, once at Lady Blessington's, and once in 
my own house. Those who can recall the touching words of that 
song, and unite them with the deep yet tender pathos of the music, 
will be at no loss to conceive the exceeding delight of his auditors. 

It would be foreign to my plan to enlarge these pages into a 
memory of Moore. I have given one at considerable length in my 
" Book of Memories," and I trust have rescued his character from 
the obloquy to which party spirit, on two sides, had subjected it. I 
can not repeat here what I have done in that work — vindicate by 
clear proof the high estimation in which I hold the man, even more 
than the poet ; and it was my privilege to know the former some- 
what intimately. 

The world that has amply lauded the poet has accorded scant 
justice to the man. I have endeavored to show Moore in the light 
of virtues for which he seldom receives credit — as one of the most 
independent, high-spirited, and self-respecting of men. For evidence 
that this brighter view is also the true one, I may refer those of my 
readers, who desire to know with what proofs I sustain my assertions, 
to the book I have referred to. 

When his Diary was published — as from time to time volumes of 
it appeared — slander seized on it to find means of tarnishing the 
fame of one of the best and most upright of all the men that God 
ennobled by the gift of genius. I seek in vain through the eight 
thick volumes of that Diary for any evidence that can lessen my high 
estimate of the poet. I find, perhaps, too many passages fitted only 
for the eye of love, or the ear of sympathy, but I read none that 
show Thomas Moore other than the devoted and loving husband, the 
thoughtful and affectionate parent, the considerate and generous 
friend. 

On the tomb of Thomas Moore let it be inscribed that ever, amid 
privations and temptations, the allurements of grandeur and the sug- 
gestions of poverty, he preserved his self-respect ; bequeathing no 
property, but leaving no debts ; having received no u testimonial " of 
acknowledgment or reward ; seeking none, nay, avoiding any ; mak- 
ing millions his debtors for intense delight, and acknowledging him- 
self paid by "the poet's meed, the tribute of a smile " ; never truck- 
ling to power ; laboring ardently and honestly for his political faith, 
but never lending " to party that which was meant for mankind " ; 
proud, and rightly proud, of his self-obtained position ; but neither 
scorning nor slighting the humble root from which he sprang. 

I repeat I never knew a better man than Moore in all the rela- 
tions of life ; the best of God's creatures may take him as a model 
without going wrong ; and those who adopt literature as a profes- 
sion can accept him as an example, in proof that genius may pass 
unscathed through seductions so perilous as to seem irresistible. 



THOMAS MOORE. 



355 



It is gratifying to record that the temptation (at that time scarcely 
regarded as a vice) to which he was peculiarly exposed was power- 
less to obtain influence over him.* 

Let it be frankly confessed that some of his early poems were 
seductive incitements to folly, or even sin. May we not forgive the 
fault when we remember that they were written and published while 
he was still in. early youth, and that up to the close of his life he 
deeply repented having written them ? On this head it will suffice 
to quote the testimony of Rogers : " So heartily has Moore repented 
of having written ' Poems by Thomas Little ' that I have seen him 
shed tears — tears of deep contrition — when we were talking of 
them." 

A more devotedly attached, or more thoroughly faithful husband, 
the world has rarely known. 

And a better, purer, and happier wife no man ever had. This 
is the tribute of Earl Russell : " The excellence of his wife's moral 
character, her energy and courage, her persevering economy, made 
her a better and even a richer partner to Moore than an heiress with 
ten thousand a year would have been with less devotion to her duty 
and less steadiness of conduct." 

It was not merely as a poet that he wrote these lines : 

" That dear Home, that saving Ark, 

Where love's true light at last I've found, 
Cheering within when all grows dark 
And comfortless and stormy round." 

Mrs. Hall wrote at some length a memoir of the estimable lady, 
and did justice to her memory, as I am striving now, and have 
striven elsewhere, to do to his. 

On the 1 8th of September, 1879, Mrs. Hall and I had the happi- 
ness to discharge a very happy duty to the memory of the poet. He 
is buried in the churchyard of Bromham, adjacent to Sloperton, in 
Wiltshire, where he lived from the year 181 7, and where he died in 
1852^ Charles Murray, the nephew of Mrs. Moore (who inherited 
the little she had to leave), placed in the church a memorial window 
to the poet's widow. Mr. Murray was an excellent and accom- 

* At the memorable dinner of "the Literary Fund," at which the '* good 
Prince Albert" presided (on the nth May, 1842), the two poets, Campbell and 
Moore, had to make speeches. The author of the " Pleasures of Hope," heedless 
of the duty that devolved upon him, had " confused his brain." Moore came on the 
evening of that day to our house ; and I well remember the terms of deep sorrow 
in which he spoke of the lamentable impression that one of the great authors of the 
age and country must have left on the mind of the royal and most estimable chair- 
man — then new among us. 

\ The house at Sloperton is a small cottage, for which Moore paid originally 
the sum of ^40 a year, " furnished." Subsequently, however, he became its tenant 
under a repairing lease of ^18 annual rent. He took possession of it in Novem- 
ber, 1817. Bessy was "not only satisfied, but delighted with it, which shows the 
humility of her taste," writes Moore to his mother. 



356 THOMAS MOORE. 

plished gentleman, respected, regarded, indeed beloved, by all who 
knew him. He had much ready dramatic talent, inherited from his 
father, one of the lights of the early Scottish stage. He was a brill- 
iant companion, sang sweetly, and occasionally gave marvelous ef- 
fect to comic songs. He rightly considered that to the public be- 
longed the duty of placing a " companion " window to the memory 
of the poet. But many years passed away, and nothing had been 
done. In 1879 I set to work to raise a sufficient fund for the pur- 
pose, and succeeded. On the day I have named, Mrs. S. C. Hall 
drew aside a curtain, and the memorial window was exposed to pub- 
lic view. It is an excellent Art-work by Mr. W. H. Constable, the 
eminent glass painter of Cambridge. 

A simple inscription records the fact that " This window was 
placed in this church by the combined subscriptions of two hundred 
persons,* who honor the memory of the ' Poet of all circles, and the 
idol of his own ' — Thomas Moore." 

The little she had to leave she bequeathed to her nephew, who 
sent to us many memorials of the poet, as did his much-loved widow 
when he died. Among them was a small model of an Irish harp, 
and a little plain deal table, that had during many years stood in the 
terrace-walk at Sloperton, and " on which he was accustomed to 
pencil down his thoughts." f On Mrs. Moore's death I was sent, 

* The list was, on the whole, satisfactory. The highest rank is represented ; it 
was headed by H. R. H. Prince Leopold : Lord Lansdowne and his brother, Lord 
Edmond Fitzmaurice (grandson of Moore's attached and generous friend), Lord 
O'Hagan (Lord-Chancellor of Ireland), and several other peers. There are repre- 
sentatives of literature in the Poet Laureate, the poet Longfellow, Sir Theodore 
Martin, Jean Ingelow, Wilkie Collins, Mrs. Henry Wood, Samuel Smiles, John 
Francis Waller, Justin M'Carthy, M. P., A. M. Sullivan, M. P., and others. Sev- 
eral eminent lawyers and prominent physicians are contributors ; so are many 
clergymen of various denominations ; while the list included the names of the 
Lord Mayor of Dublin, the Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, the Attorney-Gen- 
eral for Ireland, the Solicitor-General for Scotland, and a Member of Parliament 
for Dublin City. A contribution sent by the great American poet, William Cullen 
Bryant, was, I believe, the latest public act of his life. 

The sum raised, however, would not have sufficed but for the liberality of 
George W. Childs, of Philadelphia (the proprietor of the Public Ledger), who gen- 
erously offered to make up any deficiency, and sent a contribution of ^50. In- 
deed, he offered to pay the whole of the cost, and so relieve me of all trouble and 
responsibility. 

The window represents the Last Judgment, thus illustrating two of the sacred 
melodies. It is the west window ; the "west" he dearly loved : often watching 
the setting of the sun : and, moreover, it is the point nearest to Ireland. It is not 
mere fancy to think the poet would have preferred the west to the east window. 
A brief service was held in the church by the estimable Vicar, the Rev. J. B. 
Edgell, who was the Vicar when Moore lived at Sloperton ; by whom he was buried 
in the churchyard ; and who continued the friend of the widow until her removal 
from earth. 

f This table I have bequeathed to George W. Childs, Esq., of Philadelphia. 

Moore's Bible was presented to me. On the fly-leaf is this entry : 

" Anna Jane Barbara, our first child, born at twenty minutes after eleven o'clock 



THOMAS MOORE. 



357 



by her request, " Crabbe's " inkstand — the inkstand that had been 
presented to Moore by the sons of Crabbe on the death of their 
father — with it I was given the original copy of one of the most 
charming of Moore's poems — " Lines to Crabbe's Inkstand." The 
poem and the letter from Crabbe's sons I gave several years ago to 
the poet Longfellow, inclosing them in a small waste-paper basket 
that Moore generally used, promising that he should have the ink- 
stand also, when I died : but in 1881, on the death of Mrs. Hall, I 
sent it to him inclosed in a carved oak box in which she used to 
place the most loved of her correspondence. I received a most 
sweetly grateful letter of thanks from Longfellow not long before he 
died. To this incident I have alluded elsewhere. 

Among the relics of Moore in my possession were two medals 
which I subsequently presented to the Royal Irish Academy : one 
was from the College Historical Society, for composition in 1798 ; 
and the other was awarded to him while at the Classical English 
School of J. D. Malone, for reading history, 1785. If the date 1785 
is correct, Moore must have been only six years of age when he re- 
ceived the silver medal for reading history. I presented also to the 
Academy his diploma as an honorary member. 

It was my happy task to place a marble tablet over the door of 
the house in Aungier Street. It simply said : " In this house, on 
the 28th May, 1779, the poet Thomas Moore was born." I also 
placed a marble tablet over the door of the house in Wexford where 
the parents of Moore lived till within a few weeks of his birth. It 
contained this inscription : 

" In this house was born, and lived to within a few weeks of the birth of 
her illustrious son, AnastaSIA Codd, the wife of John Moore, and mother 
of the poet Thomas Moore ; and to this house on the 26th of August, 1835, 

at night, on Tuesday, the fourth of February, eighteen hundred and twelve, at 
Brompton. T. M." 

" Anastasia Mary, our second child, born five minutes before six o'clock in the 
morning, Tuesday, March sixteenth, eighteen hundred and thirteen, at Kegworth, 
Leicestershire. T. M." 

" Olivia Byron, our third child, was born five minutes after ten in the morning, 
August eighteenth, 1814, and died about five in the morning of Friday, March 
seventeenth, 1815, at Mayfield, Ashbourne. T. M." 

" Our dear child, Barbara, died at Hornsey, on Thursday, the eighteenth of 
September, 1817. T. M." 

" Our first little boy, and fourth child, born a quarter before four, on Saturday 
morning, October twenty-fourth, 1818, at Sloperton Cottage, Devizes. T. M." 

"Christened, Thomas Lansdowne Parr, December twelfth." 

" John Russell, our second boy, and fifth child, born ten minutes before twelve 
in the day, on Saturday, the twenty-fourth of May, 1823, at Sloperton Cottage. 

" T. M." 

" Our second-born child, Anastasia Mary, was taken away from us about twelve 
o'clock in the day, on the eighth of March, 1829. T. M." 

"Our beloved boy, Russell, was lost to us about three o'clock on Wednesday, 
the twenty-third of November, 1842, aged nineteen." 

" Our dear Tom died in Africa on his way home, in 1846." 



358 THOMAS MOORE. 

came the poet in the zenith of his fame, to offer homage to the memory of 
the mother he honored, venerated, and loved. These are his words : ' One 
of the noblest-minded, as well as the most warm-hearted, of all God's creat- 
ures, was born under this lowly roof 

Among some of Moore's manuscripts in my possession I found 
the following " fragments," still unprinted, but not unworthy to be 
introduced among his works. They are thus headed : 

" Fragments of a work which I began many, many years ago, giving an 
account of all the most celebrated and pious women that have appeared in 
different countries." 

" Be thou the dove that flies alone 
To quiet woods and haunts unknown, 
And there beside the river's spring, 
Reposing droops her timid wing — 
Then if the hovering hawk be near, 
The mirror of the fountain clear 
Reflects him ere he finds his prey, 
And warns the trembling bird away ! 
Oh sister dear ! be thou the dove, 
And fly this world of impious love : 
The page of God's immortal book 
Shall be the spring, th' eternal brook, 
Within whose current night and day 
Thou'lt study heaven's reflected ray ; 
And if the foes of virtue dare 
With gloomy wing to seek thee there, 
Thou'lt see how dark their shadows lie 
'Twixt heaven and thee, and trembling fly." 

" Oh ! lost forever — where is now 

The bland reserve, the chastened air 
That hung upon thy angel-brow, 
And made thee look as pure as fair ? 

" Whither are all the blushes fled, 

That gave thy cheek a veil so bright, 
And on its sacred paleness shed 
Such delicate and vestal light ? 

" All, all are gone — that paleness too ! 

Oh ! 'twas a charm more heavenly meek, 
More touching than the rosiest hue 

That ever burned on rapture's cheek ! " 

" Those eyes in shadow almost hid. 

Should never learn to stray, 
But calm within each snowy lid, 

Like virgins in their chamber stay. 
Those sealed lips should ne'er be won 

To yield a thought that warms thy breast, 
But like May-buds that fear the sun, 

In rosy chains of silence rest." 



MARIA EDGEWORTH. 



359 



I have devoted some space to this memory of a man I esteemed, 
respected, and revered, honored and loved in common with all who 
knew him. Of " authorities " better entitled to confidence than I 
can be, I shall quote in conclusion but one — Dr. Parr, who pre- 
sented a ring " to one who stands high in my estimation for original 
genius, for his independent spirit, and incorruptible integrity." 

Maria Edgeworth. — I write the name with respectful homage, 
no less than devoted affection. It was not an evening, but a week, 
that we spent at her house. The following note she placed in Mrs. 
Hall's album preserves the date : 

"June 1 8, 1842. 

" I rejoice to have this day the pleasure of seeing Mr. and Mrs. Hall at 
my own home at Edgeworthstown — and I the more rejoice as I know they 
are on a tour through Ireland, which they will illustrate by their various tal- 
ents — and truly represent, setting down naught in malice — and if nothing ex- 
tenuating, nothing exaggerating. Maria Edgeworth." 

In our work, " Ireland — its Scenery and Character," we fully de- 
scribed our visit to Edgeworthstown. It was not a little gratifying to 
receive on that head a letter from the estimable lady, in which she 
wrote, " You are, I think, the only persons who have ever visited me 
who have not written a line I should desire not to read." A chapter 
concerning her will be found in the " Book of Memories," and also 
one in Mrs. Hall's " Pilgrimages to English Shrines." Mrs. Wilson, 
Miss Edgeworth's sister, also wrote to us her " grateful thanks " for 
the delicacy with which we had avoided saying anything that could 
" violate the privacy of the domestic life in which my sister de- 
lights." 

We had known Maria Edgeworth previously in London, when 
she was a visitor to her sister, Mrs. Wilson, at whose house we met 
also the very elite of literary society, who had gladly seized the op- 
portunity to meet one whose celebrity had commenced before most 
of them were born : for in 1830, though she had still many years be- 
fore her, she was more than sixty years old. Her personal appear- 
ance was that of a woman plain of dress, sedate in manners, and re- 
markably small of person. She told us an anecdote on that head. 
Traveling in a mail-coach, there was a little boy, also a passenger, 
who, wanting to take something from the seat, asked her if she would 
be so kind as to stand up. " Why, I am standing up," she answered. 
The lad looked at her with astonishment, and then, realizing the 
verity of her declaration, broke out with, " Well, you are the very 
littlest lady I ever did see ! " 

I recall to memory one of the evenings at Mrs. Wilson's, when 
among the guests were Hallam, Sydney Smith, and Milman. I seem 
to see the stately form of Hallam — " classic Hallam " — towering be- 
side that of a man whose personal appearance was anything but 



360 M ARIA EDGEWORTH. 

stately, Sydney Smith. The one a grandly-shapen image of ma- 
jestic man ; the other portly but obese. The one saying little, the 
lips of the other dropping sparkling diamonds of wit every now and 
then, attention to which was demanded by the speaker's own bois- 
terous laugh. Milman, again, bent almost double, not by age but 
some spinal ailment, was a contrast to both. Especially was he so 
to his brother clergyman, the witty Canon, for he seemed to think 
hauteur an essential feature of the clerical office, and impressed, not 
agreeably, on the beholder, the text, " I am holier than thou," an 
assertion that Sydney Smith was entirely void of. Bowed and stoop- 
ing though he then was, there had been a time when the assumption 
of dignity inseparable from the Rev. Henry Hart Milman was made 
imposing by an upright bearing and a graceful, if not stately, form. 
I had seen him in those days, in his rooms at Oxford, so long ago as 
1829, when, absorbed in his task, he was preparing for the Triennial 
Commemoration of that year, in which I heard as well as saw him 
take a striking part. 

I return to the theme of Miss Edgeworth. There was a charm 
in all she looked and said and did. Incessant and yet genial activ- 
ity was a marked feature of her nature. She seemed to be as nearly 
ubiquitous as a human creature can be, and always busy ; not only 
as a teacher of her younger brothers and sisters (she was nearly fifty 
years older than one of them), but as the director and controller of 
the household. We could but liken her to the benevolent fairy from 
whose lips were perpetually dropping diamonds ; there was so much 
of kindly wisdom in every sentence she uttered. She was born on 
the 1st of January, 1767, "a God-given New-Year's gift" (as, in a 
letter to Mrs. Hall, she calls herself) to her almost boy-father : for, 
although she was his second-born (he was barely twenty-two years 
old when she was placed in his arms), ultimately she was one of 
twenty-two children born to Richard Lovell Edgeworth by four 
wives. Among Irish writers she continues to be facile princeps, the 
foremost and the best, as well as the earliest. The debt of mankind 
to her would have been large if her labors had had no other result 
than to stimulate Scott to do for Scotland what she had done for 
Ireland.* 

From the day we arrived at Edgeworthstown, to find a nosegay of 
fair flowers on our dressing-table, to the day we left it, there was not 

* His tribute to the admirable lady says all that need be said of her works : 
" Without being so presumptuous as to hope to emulate the rich humor, pathetic 
tenderness, and admirable tact which pervade the works of my accomplished friend, 
I felt that something might be attempted for my own country of the same kind 
with that which Miss Edgeworth so fortunately achieved for Ireland — something 
which might introduce her natives to those of the sister kingdom in a more favor- 
able light than they had been placed hitherto, and tend to procure sympathy for 
their virtues and indulgence for their foibles." 



MARIA EDGE WORTH. 361 

an hour that yielded nothing of delight. A wet day was especially 
a " godsend " to us, for then Miss Edgeworth was more at leisure to 
converse. She did all her work in her library, household work and 
all ; seated at a small desk, made for her by her father's hands, and 
on which he had placed an inscription — that there her various works 
for old and young were written, " never attacking the personal char- 
acter of any human being, or interfering with the opinions of any 
sect or party, religious or political." 

That eulogy she continued to merit during the whole of her long, 
happy, and prosperous life. She died at Edgeworthstown on the 
22d of May, 1849, in the eighty-third year of her age. If ever there 
was " even tenor " in any life it was in hers. Her writings have 
been objected to on the ground that religion was kept too much apart 
from them ; certainly the theme is not often advanced, and is never 
intruded. But that they were rightly toned on that sacred theme, 
who that reads them can doubt ? Her first and latest teacher, her 
father, affirmed his conviction that " religious obligation is indispen- 
sably necessary in the education of all descriptions of people, in every 
part of the world," and considered " religion, in the large sense of 
the word, to be the only certain bond of society " ; while his daugh- 
ter, whose mind he must naturally be considered to have, to a great 
extent, formed, protested against the idea that he designed to " lay 
down a system of education founded upon morality, exclusive of 
religion." A similar protest will those who truly appreciate Miss 
Edgeworth be ready to enter on her behalf. I may note here that 
family prayer always commenced the day at Edgeworthstown. 

It seems to me that I might write a volume, and that I ought to 
do so, without exhausting this happy subject ; for a memory of 
Maria Edgeworth is suggestive of happiness only. Forty years 
have gone into the past ; yet Edgeworthstown is as fresh in my re- 
membrance as it was in 1842 ; and the good woman who was its bless- 
ing, and the blessing of all humankind who can be influenced by holy 
example and holy teaching, is before me now as vividly as if in act- 
ual presence. It is indeed a privilege to render homage to the mem- 
ory of this admirable woman. Trite as are the famous words that 
have been applied to so many, I venture to quote them in reference 
to her, and to declare of her works that they are " not of an age, but 
for all time." They came almost as a miraculous revelation of what 
fiction might be rendered, in the hands of an author as pure-minded 
as gifted, on the readers of her day — a day removed by more than 
two thirds of a century from our own. The circulating library was 
then too truly what Sheridan made " Sir Anthony Absolute " de- 
scribe it as being, " an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge," and 
frivolity or coarseness were the chief characteristics of the writers who 
catered for it. Miss Edgeworth was the pioneer of Sir Walter Scott 
in bringing about a great reform. 

Though her affection for Ireland was fervent and earnest, she 



362 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

was of no party, even in that epoch of its history, when party-spirit 
ran so furiously high. She had enlarged sympathies and views for 
its advancement ; neither prejudice nor bigotry tainted her mind or 
heart. Her religious and politicial faith was Christian, in the most 
extended sense of that holy word ; though a literary woman, she 
was without vanity, affectation, or jealousy : in short, a perfect 
woman — 

" Not too bright nor good 
For human nature's daily food." 

Studious of all home duties, careful for all home requirements, ever 
actively thoughtful of all the offices of love and kindness which sanc- 
tify domestic life, the genius that inspired her pen never interfered 
with her active practice of domestic duties from early childhood up 
to the close of her lengthened life. Her life was indeed a practical 
illustration of Milton's lines : 

" To know 

That which about us lies in daily life, 

Is the prime wisdom." 

Alas ! the memorials of her earth-life are very scanty. She once 
said to Mrs. Hall, " My only ' Remains ' shall be in the church at 
Edgeworthstown," and she left a letter of request that no life of her 
might be written, nor any of her correspondence published. She 
lives, and will live forever, in her imperishable works.* 

Frances Anne Beaufort, the fourth wife of Richard Lovell Edge- 
worth, was married to that admirable gentleman, in May, 1798, and 
died at Edgeworthstown in February, 1865, surviving her renowned 
step-daughter by sixteen years ; having attained the patriarchal age 
of ninety-five. From a little brochure privately printed, sent to Mrs. 
Hall soon after her death, I extract two passages : 

" Mrs. Edgeworth became the head of a large family which consisted of 
the two sisters of the late Mrs. Edgeworth, and the children of three previous 
marriages, with all of whom she lived in perfect harmony. She inherited a 
gentle cheerfulness and equanimity of temper, which with her never-failing 
kind-heartedness made all who came within her sphere happy and contented. 
She had six children of her own, but they never biased or lessened her af- 
fection for their brothers and sisters ; nor did she in the multifarious business, 
and complicated accounts, which fell to her share in her new position, neg- 
lect her accomplishments. 

" Her funeral was attended by a vast multitude, without a word or a 
crush, all in silent sorrow for their friend. Her charity had been ceaseless 

*From the very earliest of their intercourse, Mrs. Hall received the warmest 
encouragement from Maria Edgeworth. 

When Mrs. Hall published her " Sketches of Irish Character," she ventured (I 
well remember) to send a copy to her renowned countrywoman ; she received in 
reply a thorough analysis of the book, a note upon each and all of the stories, with 
very warm praise of the whole. There was not only no tone of jealousy, there was 
a strongly expressed joy that another author was rising to continue in a safe, right, 
and holy spirit, the work Maria Edgeworth had done for Ireland. 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 363 

for the sixty-seven years she had resided at Edgeworthstown ; at the time of 
the famine in 1846, she employed a great number of poor spinners and knit- 
ters and work-women, many of whom continued in her pay to the day of her 
death, industrious and happy under her care. In the long years in which 
she had lived there she never spoke or thought of any one, nor did any one 
ever speak or think of her, but with kindness and regard." 

It is to me a happy memory, that which associates the name of 
Anna Maria Hall with the name of Maria Edgeworth. Well I know 
the one would have gloried in the belief that she had done for her 
country a tithe of what had been done for it by the other — the illus- 
trious lady she admired, honored, and loved : that the prophecy of 
the one when " making up her books " for the final closing, had been 
realized, even in a degree, by the other who was still trembling on 
the threshold of fame. 

It is a memory that carries me back forty years, that which is 
associated with one who was born more than one hundred and fifteen 
years ago, thirty-three years before the nineteenth century com- 
menced. 

Thomas Carlyle. — I call to remembrance, as the happiest 
memory I preserve of that great man, Thomas Carlyle, his appear- 
ance as I saw him often presiding at meetings in defense of Gov- 
ernor Eyre," the question of whose deeds in Jamaica was very 
prominent in 1865. Carlyle had no pretension to eloquence, in the 
ordinary sense of the term ; but in " thoughts that breathe and 
words that burn " he was a leader and a guide whenever and wher- 
ever he spoke — ardent, vehement, bitter ; his tongue retaining to the 
last a marked Scottish accent, that naturally became broader and 
more noticeable when the speaker was under the influence of excite- 
ment, which he did not control, or attempt to control. Far from 
doing so, he gave way rapidly and unrestrainedly to the impulse of 
the moment ; and, shaking his long locks as an enraged lion might 
have shaken his mane as he sprang upon his prey, would suffer him- 
self to be carried away in a torrent of fiery talk. 

It was said of the elder Kean that his stage combats were " ter- 
ribly in earnest." Those who encountered him in mimic strife, 
perpetually dreading that deadly wounds would follow what should 
have been mock encounters. So it was with Carlyle. He addressed 
his audience as if in its midst had been seated his mortal foe, pour- 
ing out execrations without stint, imagining an opponent he was 
bound to crush, and so " threw his blood-stained sword in thunder 
down " — as a challenge to fresh strife. He had entered — warmly is 
too weak a word — into the cause of Governor Eyre, that " a blind 
and disgraceful act of public injustice might be prevented." His 
example was followed by some of the leading men of England, 
among them the Poet Laureate, John Ruskin, and Henry Kingsley. 
They protested against " hunting down a man who had preserved to 



364 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

the British Crown the Island of Jamaica and the lives of all its white 
inhabitants." 

The event has now passed into the oblivion awaiting the side 
issues that lie apart from those main events of history whose decision 
convulses the world, and is forgotten by nine tenths of ordinary 
readers ; but it was productive of intense excitement in England at 
the time. Some reference to it will not be out of place. A grand 
jury had ignored the bill by which it was sought to indict Governor 
Eyre for murder. A Jamaica committee was formed consisting of 
some eminent men and prominent philanthropists, who combined to 
avenge an accused and punished man, whom, it can not be doubted, 
they considered unjustly done to death. They sent a deputation of 
inquirers to Jamaica, who brought over a large number of witnesses.* 
To oppose that movement a society was inaugurated, entitled " The 
Eyre Defense and Aid Fund." The Earl of Shrewsbury and Tal- 
bot was president of the committee ; Carlyle was one of its vice- 
presidents. 

Governor Eyre is living in retirement or seclusion. If he was — 
nearly twenty years ago — exposed to persecution unmitigated — un- 
reasoning hatred, indeed — and was sacrificed, as he undoubtedly 
was, to the clamor of party, he took with him, and has kept, that 
which is of infinitely greater value than would have been the ap- 
plause of listening senates — the approval of his conscience. But 
that was not his sole consolation. Some of the most enlightened, 
upright, and benevolent men of the age, the loftiest minds, and the 
most righteous men of his country — and not of his own country 
alone — sustained the verdict of honorable acquittal delivered in the 
West Indies by impartial inquirers and witnesses whose intelligence 
was obtained on the spot, a verdict which pronounced that he saved 
Jamaica from the horrors witnessed in St. Domingo, and prevented 
the massacre of all the white population of Jamaica, and, for a time 
at all events, the loss of that island to the British Crown. But he 
obtained a monstrous reward for his great services to the state — he 
was deprived of office and all hopes of restoration to office, had to 
sustain his defense out of his own funds, and was rendered, in fact, 
a man utterly ruined. 

Many men well competent to speak deposed to the antecedents 
of Governor Eyre in New South Wales and New Zealand — as " a 
great traveler, a philanthropist, a protector of the aborigines in 
Australia, and as having through life maintained a high and spotless 
character." Such is the testimony of his friend Sir Roderick Mur- 
chison ; it was borne out by that of other authorities equally reli- 
able. 

* Their programme was thus introduced : " The Jamaica Committee have re- 
solved to undertake the duty, now finally declined by the government, of prosecut- 
ing Mr. Eyre and his subordinates for acts committed by them in the so-called 
rebellion, and especially for the illegal execution of Mr. Gordon." 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 365 

John Ruskin, who contributed ^100 to the fund, thus spoke of 
him : 

" From all that I have heard of Mr. Eyre's career, I believe that his hu- 
manity and kindness of heart, his love of justice and mercy, and his eminent- 
ly Christian principles, qualified him in a very high degree for the discharge 
of his arduous and painful duties at a most critical period of the history of the 
colony whose government he had to administer." 

Carlyle said : 

" For my own part, all the light that has yet reached me on Mr. Eyre and 
his history in the world goes steadily to establish the conclusion that he is a 
just, humane, and valiant man, faithful to his trusts everywhere, and with no 
ordinary faculty of executing them ; that his late services in Jamaica were of 
great, perhaps of incalculable value, as certainly they were of perilous and 
appalling difficulty— something like the case of ' fire,' suddenly reported, ' in 
the ship's powder-room' in mid-ocean, where the moments mean the ages, 
and life and death hang on your use or your misuse of moments." 

The Bishop of Jamaica, in speaking about him, said : 

" I firmly believe that the speedy suppression of the murderous insurrec- 
tions in Jamaica is attributable, under God's providence, to the promptitude, 
courage, and judgment with which he acted under circumstances of peculiar 
difficulty and danger." 

The Poet Laureate subscribed to the fund, " as a protest against 
the spirit in which a servant of the state, who had saved to us one 
of the islands of the empire and many English lives, seemed to be 
hunted down." 

The negroes had shown of what metal they were made by atroci- 
ties that were considered, and rightly, as the foreshadowings of a 
gigantic and indiscriminate massacre : the bygone horrors of past 
revolts loomed out of the distance of years. The extermination of 
the whites in St. Domingo was remembered by some, and the terror 
it had excited remained an inherited memory with many. In Ja- 
maica at that time the blacks numbered forty to one as compared 
with the whites ; they were sheltered by thick forests, inacessible 
mountains, and almost impassable rivers ; they had been encouraged 
by ferocious leaders, and supplied with arms that would be suffi- 
ciently effective in such hands. 

Under these circumstances, a mulatto named Gordon, a member 
of the Legislature, who, beyond all doubt, led the " rebellion," was 
taken, tried by court-martial, and hanged at Morant Bay. Ample 
proof was obtained that he was the Obeah Man," to whom the 
mass of the negroes looked up as at once their priest and leader. 
He was clearly proved to be " chief cause and origin of the whole 
rebellion " ; to quote the words of Professor Tyndall, " the tap-root 
from which the insurrection drew its main sustenance." 

He made no secret of his intentions. They were, that the negroes 
should be the possessors of the island, from which the whites were 
to be expelled. How that object was to be accomplished was clearly 



366 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

shown. A ruthless band of fiends commenced the work at Morant 
Bay. The news of the massacre — the men butchered, the children 
slaughtered, and the women worse than dead — was communicated 
to Kingston, and Governor Eyre was called upon to act. These few 
facts will suffice as a record of the proceedings of the Committee of 
" The Eyre Defense and Aid Fund " in which Carlyle took so emi- 
nent a part. 

It seemed to me, then, that if the negroes of Jamaica had been 
dealt with by this fierce man of letters instead of the meekly brave 
and considerately resolute Governor, how much stronger would have 
been their protest against the fate to which they had been subjected. 
Assuredly Governor Eyre looked what he was — a merciful man who 
could never either deliberately or heedlessly commit a cruel act, in 
whom wrath was bridled by conscience, and to whom the duty of 
punishing could never be other than a dismal and revolting neces- 
sity. He seemed to be, what then — as now — I believe him to have 
been, a man to whom the approval of his conscience was necessary 
in committing himself to any course of action, and who did what he 
and many more believed to have been his simple duty — and no 
more. 

Of the Philosopher of Chelsea I knew but little apart from our 
meetings on the Committee of the Eyre Defense Fund, and I think 
I visited him but once from the time when, in 1834, "a poor pair of 
emigrants " settled in Cheyne Row, in a house (No. 24) which they 
never quitted until their removal to the churchyard.* 

I humbly think his " Reminiscences " as given to the world by his 
executor, Mr. Froude, is a very unsatisfactory book, and does not 
show the sunny side of his character — that society would have lost 
very little if it had been suppressed ; indeed, the writer himself 
seems haunted by a suspicion that it would have been " so best." 
It inculcates no sentiment akin to religion, impresses no feeling of 
loyalty, and if any of the virtues are advocated it is so rather in the 
manner of a lawyer who finds a few words concerning them in his 
brief. His domestic relations, I have reason to know, were not 
healthful, and his frequent allusions to his wife, whom he here calls 
his " darling," and concerning whom he writes much, but says little, 
I fear are to be regarded rather as a confession that requires absolu- 
tion than the outpouring of a loving soul that perpetually mourns 
separation, while not a solitary word occurs to intimate the hope of 
a reunion hereafter. If " truth will be cheaply bought at any price," 
so well ; but I greatly fear the book teaches more of what should be 
avoided than of what it would be wise to imitate and copy. 

* Carlyle is buried in the ancient burying-ground of Ecclefechan. The stone 
bears the following inscription : " Here rests Thomas Carlyle, who was born at 
Ecclefechan 4th December, 1795, and died at 24, Cheyne Row, Chelsea, London, 
on Saturday, February 4, 1881." 



LADY BLESSINGTON. 367 

Posthumous honors were lavished on him when he died ; the 
wreaths of his admirers were thickly strewn on his tomb. If he had 
earned, he received, homage from all humankind, and perhaps no 
man of letters ever went to the grave with a larger gathering of wor- 
shipers. He had long passed fourscore years of life ; the books he 
produced make a library, and surely no man ever had so large or so 
grand a " following." 

Lady Blessington, when I saw her first, was residing at Sea- 
more Place, Park Lane. That was in 1831. She had written to 
Colburn tendering her services as a contributor to the New Monthly ; 
in consequence of which I waited upon her. She received me with 
kindness and courtesy, and conversed with me regarding the writ- 
ings of her countrywoman Mrs. S. C. Hall, with which I found her 
well acquainted. But the subjects she suggested for the magazine 
were not promising. Some objects in her charmingly furnished 
drawing-room led to remarks concerning Byron, of whom she re- 
lated to me some striking anecdotes. It was natural to say, as I did 
say, " If you desire to write for the New Monthly, why not put on 
paper the stories you are telling me about the great poet ? " Out 
of that simple incident arose the " Conversations with Lord Byron," 
which infinitely more than all her other works put together associ- 
ates her name with literature. Not long afterward she removed 
to Kensington Gore, and I had a general invitation to her " even- 
ings." 

At that period she was past her prime no doubt, but she was still 
remarkably handsome ; not so perhaps if tried by the established 
canons of beauty ; but there was a fascination about her look and 
manner that greatly augmented her personal charms. Her face and 
features were essentially Irish ; and that is the highest compliment 
I can pay them. Although I knew her history sufficiently well, I 
attributed to this particular daughter of Erin her share of the " wild 
sweet briery fence that round the flowers of Erin dwells," and felt 
conviction that for the unhappy circumstances of Lady Blessington's 
early life, the sins of others, far more than her own, were responsi- 
ble, and that she had been to a great extent the victim of circum- 
stances. To that opinion I still hold — some thirty years after her 
death, and more than fifty since I first saw her. 

Her " evenings " were very brilliant. Her guests were the lead- 
ing men of mark of the age, and of all countries. There was cer- 
tainty of meeting some one who was thenceforward never to be for- 
gotten. The sometime Emperor of the French was seldom absent. 
Prince Louis Napoleon looked and talked in those days as if op- 
pressed by a heavy dread of the future, rather than sustained by an 
unquenchable flame of hope, and gave one the idea of a man whose 
omens of his after career were far more gloomy than sanguine. He 
seldom spoke, except on trivial matters of the day ; and of a surety 



368 LADY BLESSING TON. 

few who met him there had the faith which it is said her ladyship 
held, that he was destined to be " great hereafter." 

It was a dark day for him that time of exile, and destined to be 
followed by an astonishing blaze of prosperity ; and then — by dark- 
est night ! Many who often saw him at Gore House, condemned to 
an apparently hopeless exile, the much-ridiculed knight-errant of a 
fallen cause, lived to behold him in " glory and in state," reigning at 
the Tuileries the third emperor of his name ; and some encountered 
him yet again a wanderer, humbled, deserted, and expatriated, 
dwelling in lonely solitude at Chiselhurst. It was affirmed that he 
had been ungrateful to Lady Blessington and Count d'Orsay, who 
" believed in him " when few others did ; but ingratitude was not one 
of the Emperor's vices. It is certain that both expected too much ; 
that after the events of 1848 her ladyship demanded from the Prince- 
President social recognition and admission to his private parties, the 
inevitable consequence of granting which must have been that from 
receptions where Lady Blessington was present, Lady Cowley, the 
wife of the English Embassador, would have been absent. 

The old road of a disproportion between income and expenditure 
conducted Lady Blessington in 1849 to a disastrous termination of 
her brilliant career. Gore House was deserted, its treasures were 
brought to the hammer, and, to escape her creditors, its mistress be- 
came that which her ancient guest had recently ceased to be — an 
exile, and, retiring to the Continent, died at Paris June 4, 1849. Her 
friend, Count d'Orsay, that once "glass of fashion and mold of 
form," had preceded her to the Continent — like herself, encom- 
passed by debt, and he followed her to the grave in 1852. Before 
his death he had erected a huge monument over the grave of Lady 
Blessington in the burial-ground of Chambourcy. His own remains 
were laid beside hers, and under that monumental pyramid, in mas- 
sive sarcophagi, the two bodies molder into dust. Among those 
who attended the burial of the Count was his sometime friend, the 
Emperor of the French. 

Gore House is now obliterated. It may be said without exag- 
geration that the downfall of that splendid and famous mansion 
broke Lady Blessington's heart. To see all her household gods, 
that were endeared to her by a thousand brilliant associations, made 
the prey of the auctioneer — to be driven from England a hopeless 
fugitive — was more than her sensitive nature could bear. 

Whatever the faults and errors of her life, I am sure that, as Mrs. 
Hall said in a letter written in 1854 to Lady Blessington's biographer, 
Dr. Madden, " God intended her to be good." She was inherently 
generous, sympathetic, and benevolent : with much of the charity 
that " covereth a multitude of sins." Her name will not live by rea- 
son of her many published books. They are forgotten, and perhaps 
it is as well they should be. I believe none of her family live ; her 
niece and namesake, who wrote two or three novels, died young ; she 



LADY BLESSING TON. 369 

was a sweet and handsome girl, but it was evident that the shadow 
of early death was over her youth. Lady Canterbury, sister of Lady 
Blessington, also a beautiful woman, left no children. 

Count d'Orsay, who married Lady Harriet Gardiner, the daugh- 
ter of Lord Blessington by a former wife, was in person what 
readers may imagine " the Admirable Crichton " to have been — tall, 
remarkably well formed, handsome, yet with features inclining to 
the effeminacy that was conspicuous in his character. Stories are 
recorded in abundance of his reckless extravagance and utter want 
of principle ; yet perhaps as many are told that indicate generous 
sympathy, a warm heart, and a liberal hand.* It was said that his 
tailor never asked him to pay a bill ; he was very largely recom- 
pensed by the circulated report that he was the fashioner of the 
glass of fashion. So it was with other tradesmen. And at bottom 
D'Orsay was not a mere fop ; he was an accomplished gentleman, 
who led, if he did not make, the fashion ; accomplished in many 
ways, for nature had endowed him with other gifts than his remark- 
able ones of form and feature. He was a good artist; — painter and 
sculptor. Mitchell published from time to time, I think, as many as 
one hundred and fifty outline portraits by him of his personal 
friends, free in treatment and striking as likenesses. He spoke sev- 
eral languages. It was rarely that he greeted a visitor without con- 
versing with him in his own tongue. 

Of the many persons eminent in letters and in art who were 
frequent attendants at the receptions of the Countess of Blessington 
I can not name one who is now living. Her visitors were all, or 
nearly all, men. Ladies were rarely seen at her receptions. Mrs. 
Hall never accompanied me to her evenings, although she was a 
frequent day-caller. We were not of rank high enough to be indif- 
ferent to public opinion ; for, putting aside the knowledge that 
slander was busy with her fame, there was no doubting the fact that 
she had been the mistress, before she became the wife, of the Earl 
of Blessington. And Count d'Orsay was so little guided by prin- 
ciple that he could not expect general credit for the purity of his 
relations with Lady Blessington ; yet, I think, he might honestly 
have claimed it. 

I believe man may feel for woman an affection as free from sen- 
suality as any affection he can feel for man — that a friendship may 
exist between man and woman such as God, who knows all things, 

* I know an anecdote of D'Orsay which, as admirably illustrative of the man, 
it is right to record. A major, hampered by debts, came to London to pay them 
by selling his commission. D'Orsay strongly urged him against such a course. 
The answer was, " I must either do so or lose my honor." D'Orsay surprised him 
by asking the major to lend him ten pounds. It was lent, though reluctantly. 
The next morning D'Orsay handed to him £l^o. He said : " It is yours. I took 
your ten pounds to Crockford's, staked it, and won that money. It is justly yours ; 
for, if I had lost, you would not have had your ten pounds returned" 
24 



370 



SAMUEL ROGERS. 



from whom no secrets can be hid, does approve, and which the 
world would sanction if it could see into the heart and mind. It is 
not enough for a woman to be pure ; she must seem pure to be so ; 
her conscience may be as white as snow, but if she give scope to 
slander and weight to calumny her offense is great. She taints those 
who are influenced by example, and renders vice excusable in the 
estimate of those whose dispositions incline to evil. 

It would occupy large space to describe the gatherings at her 
salons on the evenings when she " received." The very highest in 
rank and the loftiest in genius were there. Yet amid the reflected 
light that still shines on me, in memory, from the many stars whose 
glitter then dazzled me — some of them stars in a less figurative sense 
— I seem to recall most vividly the gout-worried author of " Re- 
jected Addresses," James Smith. He found at these evenings an 
anodyne as well as a cordial, and seldom failed to roll in, in a sort 
of carriage-chair, which left him in one of the corners of the room 
where he had always something pointed and witty to say to all who 
approached him. His face gave no token of the disease under the 
effects of which he suffered, so as to be always enduring physical 
pain. His wit was never ill-natured ; there was no sarcasm in any- 
thing he said ; indeed, a desire to give pleasure seemed ever upper- 
most in his mind. Cheerfulness was a part of his nature that suf- 
fering could not drive out. His younger brother, Horace, was 
perhaps a loftier character if less genial. He had taken the wiser 
course, and was a happy husband and father, while James lived and 
died a bachelor. I have known few better men than Horace Smith. 
It would be easy to supply a long list of recipients of his well-ad- 
ministered bounty — more especially to needy men of letters. 

The world knows that one morning the brothers woke and found 
themselves famous — through the success of their poems in imitation 
of renowned poets, " Rejected Addresses." " Rejected," indeed, 
had the " Addresses " been at first, for Murray, when the work was 
offered to him for the modest sum of ^20, declined to purchase. 
Years afterward, when the brilliant jeu d'esprit had gone through 
fifteen editions, Mr. Murray bought the copyright for ^"131 ; and, 
although published so long ago as 1812, " Rejected Addresses" is 
still high in favor with all readers who can appreciate the gentle, 
genial wit that always delights and never wounds. Nor can it be 
said of the novels of Horace Smith that they have ceased to be read, 
and lie, covered with dust, on the shelves of circulating libraries. 

Samuel Rogers. — What a contrast to the poets I have named 
was Rogers, the banker-poet of whom the past generation heard so 
much! He was born at Stoke Newington in 1763 — one hundred 
and twenty years ago ! — yet, until the year 1855, when he died, he 
was more frequently seen in society than any other man of renown. 
You could not fancy, when you looked upon him, that you saw a 



FREDERIKA BREMER. 



371 



good man. It was a repulsive countenance ; to say it was ugly 
would be to pay it a compliment,* and I verily believe it was indica- 
tive of a naturally shriveled heart and contracted soul. What we 
might have done is surely recorded as well as what we have done, 
and God will call us to account for the good we have omitted to do, 
as well as the evil we have committed. Such is the teaching of the 
New Testament. With enormous power to do good, how did Rogers 
use it? If he lent — and it was seldom he did — to a distressed 
brother of the pen, he required the return of the loan with interest — 
when it could be had ; if he gave, it was grudgingly and with a shrug. 
He was prudence personified ; some one said of him : " I am sure 
that as a baby he never fell down unless he was pushed, but walked 
from chair to chair in the drawing-room, steadily and quietly, till 
he reached a place where the sunbeams fell on the carpet." 

In all I have heard and read concerning him I can not find that 
he had at any time in his long life " learned the luxury of doing 
good." Yet his means of increasing the happiness, or alleviating 
the misery, of others were large, and his opportunities immense. 

He himself records that, when Madame de Stael once said to 
him, " How very sorry I am for Campbell ! his poverty so unsettles 
his mind that he can not write," his reply was : " Why does he not 
take the situation of a clerk ? He could then compose verses during 
his leisure hours." In this cold, unsympathizing fashion the author 
of " The Pleasures of Memory " continued to look on the troubles 
of others to the last. 

Frederika Bremer. — Among the most esteemed and honored 
of our guests, when we resided in Surrey, was Frederika Bremer. 
A little, plain, simple woman she was, who conveyed no idea that 
she had been in countries rarely visited, traveling and encountering 
many perils — alone. Her avidity to " inquire " was great, and as 
great was her power to obtain information ; the smallest hint seemed 
to lead to acquisition of knowledge : her books evidence that qual- 
ity of mind. She seemed always striving to see something she had 
not before seen, something that might be useful to her to talk about 
and write about when she went back to her home in Stockholm. 
We gave her much insight into some things that, but for her visit to 
us, might have continued strange to her, especially as regarded the 
interior habits of English cottage homes, and more especially as to 
English farms — a gentleman farmer in our neighborhood being her 
instructor. We took her to many country churches, some of them 
very old, and, above all, we showed her over royal Windsor. Al- 

* Rogers's cadaverous countenance was the theme of continual jokes. Lord 
Alvanley once asked him why, now that he could afford it, he did not set up his 
hearse ; and Sydney Smith, it is said, gave him mortal offense by recommending 
him, " when he sat for his portrait, to be drawn saying his prayers, with his face 
hidden by his hands." 



372 C. C. COL TON. 

though not one of her Majesty's subjects, the Queen would not have 
found in her realm a more devoted lover than that simple Swedish 
lady. We heard from her very often after her return to Sweden, 
and there was no one of her letters that did not contain some allu- 
sion, some words of respectful and affectionate homage for her most 
gracious Majesty. There was some personal feeling mixed with her 
admiration ; for as she was driving home with us from Windsor, in 
deep regret that she had not seen the Queen — suddenly the royal 
carriage came in sight ; we, of course, drew up to let it pass. In 
her eagerness, Miss Bremer dropped from the window a venerable 
parasol, that had been her traveling companion in many lands. In 
impulsive alarm, she opened the carriage-door to reach it ; the good 
Prince Albert saw the movement, guessed its cause, pulled the 
check-string, and sent a footman to pick it up and hand it to her. 
It was a gracious act ; little did the Royal Lady and her illustrious 
husband know whom they had thus befriended. At all events she 
had what she earnestly longed for — a sight of the Queen ; and there 
can be little doubt that an incident, at once small and great, bore 
fruitage in her heart and mind. 

Rev. C C. Colton. — It was somewhere about 1825 that I knew 
the Rev. Charles Caleb Colton, the author of a work that obtained 
much celebrity, and passed rapidly through eight editions — " Lacon ; 
or Many Things in few Words." I do not suppose there are a dozen 
persons now living who have read the book.* It was full of judi- 
cious counsel and wise thought ; but unhappily he did not carry his 
theories into practice. Though a clergyman — he was Vicar of Kew 
— he courted the company of the vicious ; he chose his associates 
from among the lowest class ; he was a professed gambler, and 
ended his life by suicide, to avoid the pain of a surgical operation 
his medical advisers had informed him he must undergo : 

" When all the blandishments of life are gone, 
The coward slinks to death, the brave live on." 

John Kitto. — Till very recently there was standing in Seven 
Stars Lane, Plymouth, the humble dwelling in which the deaf trav- 
eler was born. Seven Stars Lane, now a portion of Stillman Street, 
is one of the very oldest by-ways in time-honored Plymouth. I vis- 
ited it in the summer of 1882. The birthplace of Kitto had been 
swept away to give place to a factory ; but the worthy owner of the 
latter, desirous to pay fitting honor to the memory of one of the 
most remarkable among Devon worthies, has caused to be placed 
over the main entrance a tablet, whereon is recorded in suitable 

* He had also published in 1810, " A Plain and Authentic Narrative of the 
Stamford Ghost," and offered ^100 (which he certainly could not have paid) to any 
one who would explain the cause of the phenomenon. 



JOHN KITTO. 373 

terms the fact that in the house that formerly stood there the great 
traveler and Biblical scholar was born. 

Kitto's was, indeed, a noteworthy career. The son of a laborer, 
he owed to the loving care of an aged grandmother what imperfect 
education he received in his childhood. John's love of books was 
intense from a very early age. He was soon set to work, however, 
to assist his father in his trade of a mason ; and one day, while car- 
rying a load of slates up a ladder, slipped in the act of stepping on 
the roof they were meant for, fell some thirty-five feet, and was taken 
up fearfully injured. When he at last rose from his sick-bed, it was 
to find that the accident had left him deaf for life. The poor boy 
was then only thirteen. His only friend, his aged grandmother, had 
become too poor and decrepit to assist him, and, after trying every 
means to earn a living, he was compelled to find a melancholy asy- 
lum in Plymouth workhouse. 

Yet from that unpromising shelter he emerged to journey into 
the remote East ; and after years of fruitful labor and diligent study 
in Syria and Persia, to return home and impart the mental riches he 
had acquired to a wide public, in the forms of some of the most val- 
uable contributions that have been made during the present centu- 
ry to Biblical literature. That well-known publisher and most ex- 
cellent man, Charles Knight, became his liberal and discerning 
patron, and by his encouragement Kitto wrote for the Penny Magazine 
and Penny Cyclopcedia — afterward producing the " Pictorial Bible," a 
" Pictorial History of Palestine," etc. It was at this period of his 
career that it was my privilege to know him. 

About 1850 one of the Crown pensions of ^"ioo a year was 
granted by Lord John Russell to the deaf scholar, whom neither 
that painful infirmity nor the apparently insurmountable obstacles 
that barred his path had prevented from winning his way to a man- 
hood of earnest, excellent, and profitable missionary and literary 
labor. The grant was made in consideration of Dr. Kitto's " useful 
and meritorious literary work." Some time before, the degree of 
D. D. had been conferred on him by the University of Giessen. 
He was also a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. 

He died in 1854 at Caastadt, on the Neckar, to which place he 
had been sent for the benefit of the waters there. A monument is 
placed over his remains : surely it is a pleasure to record that it was 
erected by the publisher of his latest books, Mr. Oliphant, of Edin- 
burgh. The good man has made his mark in the literary history of 
his age and country.* 

* A neat little brochure was recently printed at Plymouth, recording the princi- 
pal events and incidents in the life of Kitto. It was written by Mr. W. H. K. 
Wright, the able and energetic secretary of the Plymouth Free Library. Mr. 
Wright is also the editor of a very interesting and valuable publication, The West- 
ern Antiquary, issued monthly, but previously published weekly in the Western 
Morning News. 



374 SERGEANT COX. 

To this brief sketch of the celebrated deaf traveler I may fittingly 
annex some reference to a man, in some respects even more remark- 
able than Kitto, as pursuing his journeys under the weight of an 
affliction that might well have rendered them impossible, or at least 
fruitless. I refer to Holman, the " blind traveler," whom I met fre- 
quently at the evening receptions of the painter, John Martin. 
He had walked over most of the countries and states of Europe, and 
described with amazing accuracy places he had visited — but had 
never seen. It was at once a delight and a marvel to converse with 
him on the subject of his travels. 

Edward William Cox. — I knew him so long ago as 1829, when 
he wrote a poem for the Amulet. Even so early in life he had pub- 
lished a volume — poetry, of course — " The Opening of the Sixth 
Seal." He was a prominent member of the Bar, and became a 
judge, though of a minor court. Like Judge Edmonds, of the Unit- 
ed States, he had been more than once questioned as to his capabil- 
ity of "judging" rightly — being a believer in Spiritualism. 

That Cox was a Spiritualist in all senses of the term it is 
hardly necessary for me to say : in platform speeches and in pub- 
lished books his opinions were made known. Though he guarded 
the expression of them somewhat — on the ground that prejudice 
might weaken his decisions delivered in a court of justice — he never 
hesitated to declare his conviction as to the verity of the phenom- 
ena he had witnessed. Nor was he in doubt as to their cause — hav- 
ing obtained and accepted sufficient evidence that those who are 
called the " dead " do appear and converse with those who are 
termed the "living." Frequently, in his own house and in mine, 
sometimes in one company, sometimes in another, the marvels of 
spiritualism were opened out to him. A few weeks before his re- 
moval from earth I was standing with him on the platform of the 
Great Western Railway. He used these words — I little thought I 
should have had to record and recall them thus — " I am as sure and 
convinced that I have seen and conversed with friends I have known 
and loved in life, who are in the ordinary phrase dead, as I am that 
these are railway-carriages I see before me ; and, if I did not so be- 
lieve, I could credit nothing for which the evidence was only my 
senses and my intelligence." 

Exactly, or as nearly as possible, such words were said to me by 
Robert Chambers and by William Howitt. It would be hard to find 
three men whose testimony would be more readily received in any 
court of law or equity ; men of larger experience, sounder judgment, 
more enlightened integrity, less likely to be deceived, less subject to 
be affected by imposture or influenced by delusion, could not any- 
where be found in the ranks of intellectual Englishmen. 

I have rarely known so fortunate a man as Sergeant Cox. He 
commenced life with no commercial, and with little intellectual, capi- 



SERGEANT COX. 



375 



tal — with, in fact, so few prospects of success, that he who had 
phrophesied his marvelous " luck " in life would have found few to 
credit him. His personal advantages were small ; his voice was not 
calculated to arrest the attention of any assembly ; his manners were 
by no means impressive or refined ; there was no evidence of force 
of character ; he had received but an indifferent education — hence 
his acquirements were limited ; he had failed in his efforts to enter 
Parliament, his native town (Taunton) having twice rejected him ; 
his legal knowledge could never have been large, for he had given 
no time to study, and his earlier necessities had forbidden him to 
" take in " in order that he might " give out." In short, if his career 
had been merely respectable, and he had filled a third-rate place in 
his profession, he would have seemed to do all that nature, opportu- 
nity, fair industry, and moderate application, intended him to do. 
" Genius " is a term not in the remotest degree applicable to him 
from the commencement to the close of his career. 

Moral courage he lacked, or he would have boldly and bravely 
resigned his office as Junior Judge of Sessions (the salary being no 
object to him), and have avowed the opinions he was known to hold, 
which in private he did not disavow — on the contrary, which he 
maintained and upheld, although their open and declared advocacy 
would have, in the estimation of many, so invalidated his decisions 
as a judge, by calling in question the soundness of his intellect, as to 
have rendered his withdrawal a duty, if not a necessity.* As it was, 
he has gone down to the grave — as one to whom the world owes but 
a small debt for benefits conferred. Yet he died in possession of 
enormous wealth, computed to be between a quarter and half a mill- 
ion sterling. In view of this fact it is mournful to have to add that 
while he lived he made little, and, at his death, no effort " to do 
good and distribute," omitting the " sacrifices " with which God is 
" well pleased." In the way of hospitality I think he spent little : 

* Judge Edmonds, of New York, was placed in a precisely similar position. He 
did not resign, but he did plainly, boldly, and emphatically avow his belief and 
defend it. I quote this passage from his avowal and defense : 

" It is now over fifteen years since I made a public avowal of my belief in 
spiritual intercourse. I was then so situated that the soundness of my intellect 
was a matter of public interest. I had just retired from serving my term in our 
Court of Appeals — the court of last resort in this State. I was then the presiding 
Justice of the Supreme Court in this city, with the power of wielding immense 
influence over the lives, liberty, property, and reputation of thousands of people. 
The soundness as well as the integrity of the administration of public justice was 
involved, and all had an interest in watching it. The cry of insanity and delu- 
sion was raised then as now. I remained on the Bench long enough, after such 
avowal, to enable people to judge how well founded the clamor was ; and for the 
fifteen years that have since elapsed I have been somewhat before the world as a 
lawyer in full practice, as a politician, active in the organization of the Republican 
party, in a literary aspect as the author and publisher of several works, professional 
and otherwise, and as a public speaker, thus affording to all an abundant oppor- 
tunity of detecting any mental aberration if there was any in me." 



376 SERGEANT COX. 

his dinner-parties were plain ; he certainly could not be accused of 
any show of extravagance. I dined at his table often in Russell 
Square ; there was commonly but a poor gathering of men of note, 
and never any women of distinction. I can not recall many repre- 
sentative men among the guests I met there ; certainly there were 
none who were prominent in the good works that glorify names — 
that nature and all humanity hold in honor. Nor was he — I believe 
I am safe in saying — a foremost upholder of any institution that was 
calculated and intended to advance the cause of religion, morality, 
social progress, or charity. I do not think there is one such that 
owes its foundation or advancement to direct aid from Mr. Sergeant 
Cox. 

At his death he left behind him a sum of probably ^400,000 — 
gained without wrong-doing certainly ; no foul work can be charged 
against him ; I do not believe he ever added a penny to his store by 
a dishonest or dishonorable action, and I fully and entirely acquit 
him of aught that was injustice to friend or " neighbor " : an unjust 
judge he assuredly never was. But the condemnation of him " who 
hid his lord's money," and neither misused nor abused it, is em- 
phatic ; his sentence to go where there is " weeping and gnashing of 
teeth " is pronounced by One to whom the secrets of all hearts are 
known, and the abstaining from doing good with wealth is as strongly 
condemned as the will to do evil with it. 

His death made no mourners (excepting his own immediate 
family), and no institution was the better because he had lived. 
He was a man of letters, yet he bequeathed nothing to the Literary 
Fund — to aid hereafter his suffering sisters and brothers in their 
struggle through the Slough of Despond. He was a member of the 
Press — he gave nothing to the " Newspaper Press Fund " — a most 
excellent society — with a long list of suffering widows and children, 
the needy families left by men who had lived laborious days as 
ministers to public knowledge. He was a member of a learned pro- 
fession that provides generously for unfortunate members — he left 
them no contribution in aid. He was, in a degree, an art-lover — 
the Artists' Benevolent Fund was no richer for his demise. He was 
a Spiritualist, printing books (never issued gratis), concerning the 
phenomena, but he left us nothing that could further or guide " in- 
quiry," and possibly lead to a discovery or development of truth, on 
which he well knew — none better — that mighty issues depended. In 
fact, there are a hundred fields for the liberal and useful expendi- 
ture of wealth, with whose existence he was, better than are most 
men, acquainted — yet to no one of which, out of his enormous wealth, 
has he bequeathed a farthing ; while to no personal friend — not 
even to those in his employ, and who must have largely contributed 
to make his fortune — did he leave the value of a shilling sterling. 

This long and prosperous career has its lesson ; there are practi- 
cal lessons that warn and scare, as well as others that stimulate and 



WILLIAM HO WITT. 



377 



encourage, and the biography that teaches by example does so often 
by the force of an example that is to be shunned. Some one has 
said, if hell is paved with good intentions, it is roofed with lost op- 
portunities. That Sergeant Cox now deeply laments over "lost 
opportunities " I no more doubt than I do his now existing in some 
new state of being, with memory strong upon him — no more than he, 
when on earth, doubted that life continues after this life. 

William Howitt. — A devoted champion of honor, virtue, tem- 
perance, rectitude, humanity, truth, was lost to earth when on the 
3d of March, 1879, William Howitt " died," if that must be called 
" death " which only infers the removal from one sphere of useful- 
ness to another. Although fourscore and five years old, in physical 
and mental vigor he surpassed many who were half his age ; labor- 
ing to the last in the service of God, for the good of all humankind 
and the humbler creatures He has made. I do not here seek to 
write a memoir of this most estimable man ; that duty must be dis- 
charged by one who has at command better means than I have.* 
He has, however, left behind him an autobiography that will in due 
course be published. 

More than sixty years ago, his name, linked with that of his hon- 
ored and beloved wife, became famous. The writings of " William 
and Mary Howitt " were familiar in youth to many who are now 
grandfathers and grandmothers ; and it may safely be declared that 
if there is one of them who did not profit by the teachings of this 
husband and wife the fault did not lie with the authors. Theirs 
— for I will not divide them, although one lives and the other is 
" gone before " — was a singularly full life ; active, energetic, upright, 
useful from its commencement to its close. Within a few weeks of 
his death, William Howitt wrote for Social Notes, which I then edited, 
three grand articles : one concerning the accursed practice of vivi- 
section ; one exposing the danger of the habit of smoking — in the 
young more especially ; and one denouncing cruelty to animals. 
These articles had all the fire of his manhood and the enthusiasm of 

* His daughter, Anna Mary Watts, is engaged on that holy work ; it is pub- 
lishing, monthly, in the Physiological Review, a most excellent periodical : no doubt 
the several chapters will be issued as a volume. Mrs. Watts has made an endur- 
ing and an honorable reputation as author of several excellent and useful works ; 
she is the wife of Mr. A. A. Watts, who is the son of Alaric Watts, well known 
and highly esteemed as nearly sixty years ago editor of the Literary Souvenir — 
certainly, the best of the annuals ; many of his poems, of great beauty and power, 
may be found scattered among books of examples of the best productions of the 
century. His wife, Mrs. Alaric Watts, was also an author of some valuable books 
for the young : she was the sister of Wiffen, a Quaker, and a poet of great ability. 
Mrs. Anna Mary Howitt Watts has found fame by the publications of serial works, 
but it rests mainly on a volume that has passed through several editions — " The Art- 
Work of Munich." It is happy knowledge to know that the renown obtained by 
William and Mary Howitt is continued into another generation. 



378 WILLIAM HO WITT. 

his youth. It was difficult in reading them to believe they had ema- 
nated from the mind and pen of a writer long past fourscore. They 
were the last warnings uttered by the great and good old man, who 
is gone to his rest. Yes, there was another addition to the hierar- 
chy of heaven when William Howitt was called from earth ! 

Thus another link drops from the chain that unites the present 
with the past. He was almost the last of the glorious galaxy of au- 
thors who, early in the century, glorified the intellectual world — al- 
most the very last. He was the acquaintance of all, the friend of 
many of them, and of a right assumed a high place among the best, 
if not the loftiest. His was, at least, a more useful life than were 
the lives of most of his contemporaries. 

Nearly sixty wedded years fell to the lot of William and Mary 
Howitt. They celebrated their golden wedding ten years ago. 
They were then dwellers in the Eternal City, and in Rome, William, 
some years later, died. By his bedside were his two daughters and 
his son-in-law, Mr. A. A. Watts. One may be sure the retrospect of 
his long life made him happy — that the prospect of a longer life, 
" even a life for ever and ever," made him yet happier ; for the faith 
of William Howitt was the faith of a Christian, and his trust was in 
the Rock of Ages. 

Some years have passed since I saw them last ; much more than 
half a century since I knew them first. Honored, esteemed, re- 
spected were they then, and so have they remained from that 
time to this. William Howitt's grave in the Protestant cemetery 
at Rome contains all that was mortal of the useful laborer in a 
wide and broad field where the seed he planted will bear fruit for 
all time. 

In 1 88 1 I visited the house at Esher where the Howitts some 
time resided. It still contains many memorials of their long and 
useful work — books, portraits, domestic adornments, gifts, many 
things associated with a life-history that suggests only matter for 
thankfulness and joy. 

The " mingled life " of William and Mary Howitt teaches one 
especial lesson that can not in the nature of things be often taught. 
It is, that two persons, man and wife, can follow the same pursuit, 
and that pursuit the one that is above all others supposed most to 
excite jealousy — not only without diminishing confidence, mutual 
dependence, affection, and love, but so as to augment each of them, 
and all. The names of Mr. and Mrs. Howitt will in time to come 
be named whenever question arises as to " compatibility of temper," 
in husband and wife, to be not only life-helpers, but laborers, in the 
same field — the vineyard of the Lord. 

" A wretched faith is their faith who believe 
The vineyard workers small rewards receive ; 
That God neglects the servants He engages, 
To do His work — and grudges them their wages." 



WILLIAM HO WITT. 



379 



I should but ill discharge my task if I made no reference to 
William Howitt's ever-brave defense of Spiritualism against mock- 
ing, incredulous, scientific, and " religious " assailants. Few books 
have been produced so exhaustive of a subject as his " History of 
the Supernatural in all Ages." But in all possible ways he stood 
foremost in the van, and was the champion of the new-old faith 
against all skeptics, no matter on what ground they took their 
stand. We know he was so to the last ; although, like many 
others, he retired from a contest, the leading fighters in which had 
ceased, as he thought (and as I think), to struggle for the truth, 
while many of them excused, if they did not sanction, deception 
and fraud. 

It was in the house of William and Mary Howitt, at Highgate, 
that I became assured there was more than I had hitherto " dreamt " 
of in the mysteries of Spiritualism, and was convinced of their truth. 
It was there Mrs. Hall and I first heard and saw things that could 
be accounted for in no other way than by admitting the presence of 
those we had known " in the flesh," and that we had, aforetime, be- 
lieved were existing after death in some other state ; in a word, 
whose souls had not ceased to exist when their bodies died. It was 
there I first heard what I could by no possibility have heard unless 
the spirit of one I had dearly loved, respected, and honored, was in 
actual communication with me. 

To suppose that William and Mary Howitt would have lent 
themselves to a blasphemous fraud was out of the question. We 
were convinced ; and the conviction, arrived at five-and-twenty years 
ago, never left us, or lessened, from that day to this. 

All I desire here to do is to accord honor and homage to a good 
and great man ; and as regards his venerated wife, to give to her 
a full moiety of my tribute to high worth and my testimony of 
strong affection and respect. 

I am nearing his age, and shall, I trust, meet him ere long. Who 
shall say that we may not together be summoned by a beneficent 
and merciful Master to labor for this earth in the sphere to which 
we shall have been removed — to extend the blessings of Spiritu- 
alism far more effectually than all our toil has enabled us to do 
here ? 

I close this brief notice by extracting a passage from one of the 
many writings of William Howitt. It is memorable, can not be read 
too often, and should be accepted as the Shibboleth of all Spiritual- 
ists who desire to learn from angels — the just made perfect, those 
nearest to the God Christ himself — instead of spirits frivolous, mis- 
leading, wicked, or altogether evil : 

"The true mission of Spiritualism, and it is a great and magnificent mis- 
sion, is to recall to the knowledge, and to restore to the consciousness of 
mankind, the Christian faith with all its divine and supernatural power. Its 
business is to exhibit the reality of its connection with God and his angels — 



3 8o SAMUEL LOVER. 

with the life and spirit of the divine Word — and to open our earth-dimmed 
eyes to perceive all the wealth of celestial wisdom in the Christian revela- 
tion ! " 

Samuel Lover. — A pleasant companion, an excellent man, and 
a poet of no mean capacity was Samuel Lover. I knew him soon 
after he settled in London. He brought with him high reputation 
as a raconteur, evidence of skill and power as a miniature-painter (for 
that was his profession), and a certain amount of renown acquired 
by the production of songs, serious and comic. His first wife was 
then living, so were two lovely little girls, their daughters. The 
mother died, and he again married. Both marriages were auspi- 
cious. His first wife helped him up the steep, cheered him on the 
way, and appreciated his efforts to obtain distinction ; his second 
comforted and consoled him in his decline, and made happy the 
close of a career not greatly checkered. His life, therefore, was 
eminently fortunate. In another way he was happy also ; for, al- 
though he did not marry until he was thirty years old, he avoided 
the pitfalls, then more than now, strewed in the path of all young 
Irishmen seeking fame, and especially so in the path of one with 
peculiar talent for " Society," who not only wrote but sang melodies, 
pleasant or pathetic, that were certain either to set the table in a 
roar, or to touch the hearts of sympathetic listeners. 

Surely, it was fame that Lover had achieved when every street 
hurdy-gurdy made the listener recall his name — when " Rory 
O'More " was the stock piece of the popular repertoire* and there 
was not a mechanic who could catch up a tune who did not hum it 
to lighten his labor or by his fireside at home. But not only that, in 
every drawing-room throughout the kingdom, in the colonies, in 
America, wherever was known the language in which it was written, 
the sweet and touching song "Angel Whispers " made its way — to 
every heart through every ear, for to feel and appreciate it no edu- 
cated musical taste or knowledge was needed ; the strain was the 
voice of nature — I should say is, for it keeps its place among the 
choicest of British melodies, although one seldom hears it now. 
Young ladies nowadays possess loftier power than it demands, and 
do not often condescend to sweet and simple ballad melodies, pre- 
ferring so to discourse as to " enchant the ear " in place of touching 
the heart ! 

That is, alas ! not only true as regards the songs of Lover ; the 
lament applies with almost equal force to those of Moore. Their 
melodies are not often the delights of the drawing-room now. Many 
ladies would consider themselves insulted if asked to play and sing 
the " Mother dear " or " As a Beam o'er the Face of the Water may 
glow," of the two lyric poets to whom Ireland and the world owe so 

* Driving in a stage-coach, from Brussels to Waterloo, I was surprised and not 
a little gratified by hearing the guard play " Rory O'More " on his key-bugle. 



SAMUEL LOVER. 



381 



much. Indeed, in most cases, such young ladies generally carry 
their music with them, in order, one is tempted to think, that if they 
do not delight an audience, they may, at least, be sure of gratifying 
themselves. But we of the old world found deeper and tenderer 
chords respond in our hearts to the once-familiar " Melodies," and 
the undying lyrics wedded to them, than are ever reached by the 
most brilliantly " difficult " music of to-day. 

Whenever Lover was our guest (which he was very often) he sel- 
dom failed to sing some song he had not then sung in public, and 
frequently it was in our circle it was heard for the first time. To 
hear him sing one of his songs was the next best thing to hearing 
Moore sing one of his. 

He reminded me much of his great prototype : in voice they 
were not unlike ; in singing both moved restlessly, as if they went 
with the words ; they were both small, yet not ungraceful of form ; 
both now and then affected Irish intonation, and both had round 
faces of the Irish type. 

It was not uncommon to hear Lover described as " a Brumma- 
gem Tom Moore." That he certainly was not. Far from it. The 
one was as original as the other, but each in his own way. He was 
neither copyist nor imitator, and, if he had less of the inventive fac- 
ulty than Moore, he had the art of making his own the thoughts for 
which there was no other owner. But it was as a teller of Irish 
stories Lover most delighted an audience. Few who heard him will 
forget the inimitable humor, the rich oily brogue, and the perfect 
ideal, he conveyed into the character when relating " New Pettaties " 
and " Will ye lend me the loan of a gridiron ? " The only man I 
knew who surpassed him in that faculty was a contemporary of his, 
an Irishman named Jones, an architect who became a sculptor, and 
was mediocre as both. 

A dangerous illness, haemorrhage of the lungs, having necessitated 
a milder climate, Lover settled at St. Helier's, Jersey : there he 
died* on the 6th June, 1868, mourned by many friends, and re- 
spected by all who knew him. 

It is not the least of his merits that in his songs and stories he 
avoided political discussions — even allusions. He was a generous 
sympathizer with all parties, but ranked himself with none ; and, 
although by no means wavering in his religious views — as a Protest- 
ant — there was rarely evidence of preference given to any creed. 

In his seventy-second year he became deaf and almost blind, but 
he continued cheerful and comparatively happy, amply meriting the 
words in which his good wife described him, writing to Mr. Syming- 
ton on the 1st June, 1868, " He is all love, gentleness, and patience." 

* " You know how, in our dear old native Ireland, every disease is called by 
the peasantry an " impression of the heart," and I really think that is the very 
disease I've got — that is, if I have any heart left at all." — Lover in a letter to Mrs. 
Hall. 



382 FRANK MA HONEY. 

The following are nearly the last lines he wrote : " May Thy rod 
and Thy staff comfort me through the valley of the shadow of 
death." * 

I knew intimately Frank Mahoney, a Roman Catholic priest, 
known in literary circles as " Father Prout." It is said, I believe 
truly, that he was a Jesuit. It was rumored that he was a Jesuit 
spy ; perhaps he was in the sense that all of his Order are so. His 
father was a respected merchant of Cork, and Mahoney inherited 
from him independence in the monetary sense of the term. In 1835, 
or thereabout, he took up his residence in London, and soon became 
closely associated with the band of literary free-lances that for some 
years made Fraser's Magazine a name of terror. Most of them were 
able men undoubtedly ; but self-indulgence was the principle that 
mainly guided the lives of them all. Mahoney took me to one of 
their " Symposiums " on an evening when he was in the chair. 
" Father Prout " spent most of his latter years in Paris, living the 
life of a mingled anchorite and sensualist. He occupied an attic 
there, where I once saw him, toasting a mutton-chop on which he 
was about to dine, while on a corner of his table, among letters and 
MSS., was laid a not very clean serviette — his table-cloth. But in 
these later years of Mahoney's life his room of reception was the 
reading-room at Galignani's, where, however, he seldom held any in- 
tercourse with his kind, usually entering, remaining for an hour or 
two, and departing without exchanging a word with any one ; and 
if earth gave him any sources of enjoyment they were not those to 
which the good, the generous, the sympathetic resort for happiness. 
He was not often a visitor to London ; but I believe he was rarely in 
the metropolis without paying a visit to us. Yet he never came with 
any apparent motive in view, and sometimes his conversation as to 
past, present, and future was limited to half a dozen sentences. Oc- 
casionally he would enter our drawing-room, keep his hands in his 
pockets, look all about him, make some such observation as, " You 
have changed your curtains since I was here last," bid us good morn- 
ing, and retire, his visit, from first to last, having perhaps occupied 
some three minutes. 

Few, I imagine, looked on Mahoney with regard — none, prob- 
ably, with respect. His was an unlovely as well as a lonely life. 
Without a home, cut off from domestic ties, and dwelling apart from 
his kind, he may have " lived laborious days " indeed ; but his rec- 

* Two volumes of a life of Samuel Lover were published in 1874 by Bayle 
Barnard, who has since died. Barnard was a playwright, and it was not a fortu- 
nate chance that made him Lover's biographer. A much better work is " Samuel 
Lover, a Biographical Sketch with Selections from his Writings and his Correspond- 
ence, by Andrew James Symington." Publishers, Blackie and Son. The author 
of this charming work has done full justice to the memory of his friend the Irish 
poet. It is a little book, but sufficiently full and comprehensive. 



J. S. LE FANU. 383 

ompense for them was very different from such as the poet antici- 
pates for those who toil — stimulated by love of God and love of man. 
An attempt was made some years ago to erect a monument of 
some sort to his memory in his native city. It fell through, how- 
ever, the subscriptions raised being insufficient for the purpose con- 
templated. Mr. Dillon Croker, who suggested the effort, wrote (as 
honorary Treasurer of the Prout Memorial Fund) : 

" For reasons which it is not necessary to discuss, the simple addition of 
Prout 's name does not appear on the vault of the Mahoney family, which is 
situated immediately under the shadow of Shandon steeple." 

His poem on the " Bells of Shandon " is, I suppose, the best 
known of all his songs. 

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. — I knew the brothers Joseph and 
William Le Fanu when they were youths at Castle Connell, on the 
Shannon ; both became famous — one as an author, the other as a 
civil engineer. They were the sons of Dean Le Fanu, a most esti- 
mable clergyman, whose mother was a niece of Richard Brinsley 
Sheridan — a descent of which the family was justly proud. They 
were my guides throughout the beautiful district around Castle 
Connell, and I found them full of anecdote and rich in antiquarian 
lore, with thorough knowledge of Irish peculiarities. They aided 
us largely in the preparation of our book — " Ireland, its Scenery and 
Character." William flourishes in active and useful life. Joseph 
died comparatively young, at his residence, Merrion Square, in Feb- 
ruary, 1873, having obtained renown as a novelist, and bequeathing 
to his family a name of which his sons and daughters may be as 
justly proud as their father was of that he inherited on both sides — 
for his not very remote ancestors were Huguenots who settled in 
Ireland after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.* 

Both the brothers were men of marked personal advantages. 
Joseph had taken honors at Trinity College, became a political 
writer, purchased and edited the Warder newspaper, subsequently 
The Mail. On the death of his wife in 1858, Le Fanu, in a great 
measure, retired from the society of which he had been an ornament, 
was seen (and that not often) only in his study at work, and died 
comparatively young. I never went to Dublin without visiting him. 
But for the domestic affliction that darkened the later years of his 
life, he might have taken a far more prominent place than he occu- 
pies in Irish history, for he had extensive knowledge based on solid 
education, was a reader and thinker, and in many ways fitted to 
shine either at the bar or in Parliament. 

* Alicia, elder daughter of Thomas Sheridan, and favorite sister of Richard 
Brinsley Sheridan, married Joseph Le Fanu. She wrote numerous works. She 
was buried in St. Peter's grave-yard, Dublin, where many members of the Le Fanu 
family have been interred. 



384 CHARLES MA TURIN. 

I indorse the opinion of a writer in the Dublin University Maga- 
zine : " To those who knew him he was very dear ; they admired 
him for his learning, his sparkling wit and pleasant conversation, 
and loved him for his manly virtues, for his noble and generous 
qualities, his gentleness, and his loving, affectionate nature." 

So long ago as the year 1821 I knew the Rev. Charles Matu- 
rin, the author of some novels that are forgotten, and of two suc- 
cessful tragedies — indebted mainly for their success to the acting of 
the elder Kean. He died in 1824. A debt of gratitude is due from 
me to him. He it was who introduced me to Dublin society, and to 
him I owe much of the comparative ease with which my first steps 
in the profession of literature were made. I had printed a book, to 
which I refer elsewhere — on the King's visit to Ireland. I was in 
the shop of Martin Keene (a well-known bookseller who lent money, 
and was paid interest by borrowers, who purchased old books at 
fancy prices), when Maturin entered, took up my poem, read a 
stanza, and put the copy down, merely saying, " That's a bad 
stanza." It was certainly mortifying ; but, resolving he should have 
the chance of reading it all, I took a copy to his house. A dirty, 
slipshod, girl-of-all-work bawled at me from the area, " What do ye 
want ? " I threw down the book and departed. Maturin did read 
it, found me out, and the result was his patronage " — not a small 
matter to me then. Tradition has preserved many of his singulari- 
ties. When he was composing, it was perilous to interrupt the 
thought that might " enlighten " the world. On such occasions he 
walked up and down from parlor to attic, with a red wafer stuck on 
his forehead to " warn off " all who drew near him. Lady Morgan 
tells us that once, when he was in difficulties (he was seldom out of 
them), Sir Charles Morgan raised for his relief ^50. It was spent 
in giving an entertainment to a large party of guests — who were wel- 
comed to a reception-room somewhat barren of furniture ; but at 
one end an old theatrical property-throne had been set up, and on it, 
under a canopy of crimson velvet, sat Mr. and Mrs. Maturin ! What- 
ever his peculiarities, Maturin was undoubtedly a man of genius, and 
of very kindly nature. 

Of very different character was Charles Phillips, who obtained 
reputation in Dublin by the publication of certain poems, and by 
orations at the bar, notably in a case of seduction, " Guthrie versus 
Sterne," his flowery eloquence obtaining large damages. He be- 
came the Irish bar-orator par excellence. He brought with him to 
London all his alliteration and flowers of rhetoric, and became a 
famous pleader at the Old Bailey. He afterward obtained one of 
the Commissionerships in Bankruptcy, and was a prosperous ab- 
sentee — no very great loss to his country. He was one of the assail- 
ants of Moore, when the poet was dead. Concerning that attack I 



WILLIAM CARLE TON. 385 

wrote a strong comment in the St. James's Magazine, then edited by- 
Mrs. Hall ; Phillips threatened an action for libel — which, however, 
he thought better of. 

Rev. George Croly was a somewhat severe and bitter political 
Tory partisan ; but as the author of two enduring novels, a success- 
ful play, and a work that professes to interpret the Apocalypse of 
St. John, he holds higher rank as an author than he did as a clergy- 
man of the Established Church — first as curate of a parish on bar- 
ren, beautiful Dartmoor, then as, for a time, Chaplain to the Found- 
ling Hospital, and subsequently as rector of one of the City churches 
— St. Stephen, Walbrook. During the mayoralty of his friend Sir 
Francis Graham Moon his parishioners presented him with a testi- 
monial — a marble bust of himself. His was not a pleasant face to 
perpetuate, neither was his a genial nature to commemorate ; a fierce 
politician, he hated his opponents with a hatred at once irrational 
and unchristian.* 

William Carleton. — I have not much to say of Carleton, and 
very little that is good. Undoubtedly he was a powerful writer, a 
marvelous delineator of Irish character — seen, however, not from its 
best side. He was essentially of the people he describes, peasant- 
born and peasant-bred, and most at home in a mud cabin or shebeen- 
shop. Of the Irish gentry he knew none beyond the " squireens " ; 
his occasional attempts to picture them are absurdities. To him 
was accorded one of the Crown pensions — ^200. It is to be feared 
the greater portion was spent in low dissipation. At all events he 
never obtained, never earned, the applause of his country or the re- 
spect of those whose respect was worth having in Dublin, the city 
where he dwelt. He was a Catholic to-day and a Protestant to- 
morrow, turning from one religion to the other as occasion served or 
invited. 

It is requisite to name him here, among the many Irish authors I 
have known ; but I did not feel for him while he lived, nor can I 
feel for him now, any respect. 

* I have a letter from Croly, so curious that I print it ; it arose out of an appli- 
cation I made to him for some notes to aid me in compiling a biography for the 
New Monthly Magazine : 

" In reply to your note relative to notes for my biography, I must protest against 
the idea altogether. When I am dead, the world may, of course, do what it 
pleases with me. But until then I shall not permit any biography of mine to be 
at its mercy. I must request that nothing shall be said about me in any work 
where you may have any influence. I should regard it as the last personal offense. 
There is, therefore, an end of the matter." 

Notwithstanding this very decided expression of opinion, he did, however, some 
years afterward, supply me with material for a biography, which I published in 
the " Book of Gems." 

Croly wrote weekly, from 1839 to 1846, the leading articles for the Britannia 
newspaper, of which I was for some years the directing editor. 

25 



386 CAROLINE NORTON. 

The Hon. Mrs. Norton. — It seems but yesterday — it is not so 
very long ago certainly — that I saw for the last time the Hon. Mrs. 
Norton.* Her radiant beauty was then faded, but her stately form 
had been little impaired by years, and she had retained much of the 
grace that made her early womanhood so surpassingly attractive. 
She combined in a singular degree feminine delicacy with masculine 
vigor ; though essentially womanly, she seemed to have the force of 
character of man. Remarkably handsome, she, perhaps, excited 
admiration rather than affection. I can easily imagine greater love 
to be given to a far plainer woman. She had, in more than full 
measure, the traditional beauty of her family, and no doubt inherited 
with it some of the waywardness that is associated with the name of 
Sheridan. 

All who are acquainted with our literary annals know that she 
was the daughter of Tom Sheridan, and the granddaughter of Rich- 
ard Brinsley Sheridan. Early in life she married the Hon. George 
C. Norton, a brother of Lord Grantley ; in 1875 she became a widow, 
and in 1876 married a second time — Sir William Stirling Maxwell, 
Bart. Her grandson is now Lord Grantley. 

In 1840 Mrs. Norton furnished me with materials for a memoir 
in the " Book of Gems " ; from that memoir I extract a passage : 

" At the age of nineteen, Miss Sheridan was married to the Honorable 
George Chappie Norton, brother to the present Lord Grantley. He had pro- 
posed for her three years previously, but her mother had postponed the con- 
tract until the daughter was better qualified to fix her choice. These years 
had enabled her to make acquaintance with one whose early death prevented 
a union more consonant to her feelings. When Mr. Norton again sought 
her hand he received it. It is unnecessary to add that the marriage has not 
been a happy one ; the world has heard the slanders to which she has been 
exposed, and a verdict of acquittal from all who for a moment listened to 
them, can scarcely have atoned for the cruel and baseless suspicions to which 
she has been subjected." 

The dark cloud thus early cast on her life continued to over- 
shadow it for many years ; if it vanished, as I believe it did, when 
her husband died and left her free to enter into new bonds with an 
estimable gentleman in all ways worthy of her, it was but a brief 
gleam of sunshine, for her own life soon afterward closed. Her 
second marriage was one of compensating happiness ; but it formed 
only the serene " finis " to a weary pilgrimage — weary, in spite of 
her literary triumphs and the homage that beauty had made hers — 
without effort — wherever she appeared. 

Jane Porter. — I had promised Jane Porter that, whenever I 
visited Esher, I would place a flower on the grave-stone that covers 
the remains of her mother and sister in the churchyard of that pretty 

* Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Sheridan. 



JANE AND ANNA MARIA PORTER. 387 

rural village of Surrey. I have done so more than once, for the last 
time in the month of March, 1881, having previously visited the 
house in which the sisters had lived,* for the pretty cottage-home is 
still there, inhabited by a most kindly lady, always willing to show 
the small low rooms consecrated to a glorious memory. 

There, during several years, lived and wrote the sisters Jane and 
Anna Maria Porter, authors of many novels, which, though now forgot- 
ten, obtained when they were written — the greater part of a century 
ago — more than renown — popularity of most extended order. The 
one was born in 1776, the other in 1780. Though children of the same 
parents, they were strangely dissimilar ; the one was a brunette, the 
other a blonde ; yet they were handsome women both. The one 
being somber, the other gay, we used to speak of them as L'Allegro 
and II Penseroso. Maria was an author in 1793 ; Jane not till 1803. 
The " Scottish Chiefs " was Jane Porter's most famous work. Who 
reads it now ? Who knows even by name " Thaddeus of Warsaw " ? 
or who can talk about " The Pastor's Fireside " ? Yet seventy years 
ago those works were of such account that the first Napoleon, on 
political grounds, paid Jane Porter the high compliment of prohibit- 
ing the circulation of " Thaddeus of Warsaw " in France. 

I remember talking with Jane Porter on the subject of her then 
lately printed book, " The Adventures of Sir Edward Seaward." It 
is a kind of copy of " Robinson Crusoe " — the story of a shipwrecked 
mariner, cast with a young maiden upon an uninhabited island, which 
they converted into a paradise. I mention the romance because it 
was so like truth that (as I was told by one of the Admiralty clerks) 
three intelligent members of the staff were employed for several 
days searching for evidence whether the island did or did not actu- 
ally exist, whether any proofs of the history given of the castaways 
were traceable, and whether, of the many persons named, any had 
places in veritable history. 

The sisters were admirable and good women, "lovely in their 
lives," acting, through a long career of success and honor, upon the 
principle which suggested the record placed by them on the grave 
of their good mother, who died aged eighty-six, and that declared 
them to " mourn in hope, humbly trusting to be born again with her 
into the blessed kingdom of their Lord and Saviour." 

We met once, with his sisters, their brother, Sir Robert Ker 
Porter, who had obtained renown in Russia and fame in England, 
by the production of huge panoramas. He had been educated as 
an artist, and was, in 1790, a student of the Royal Academy — the 
President being Benjamin West. His famous pictures are "The 

* It is not likely I shall ever again discharge that happy duty. May I delegate 
it to some kind and sympathizing reader — to whom they, and I, and their friend 
my beloved wife, may owe, though in our graves, a debt of gratitude — and, per- 
haps, be able to pay it ? 



388 SHERIDAN KNOWLES. 

Battle of Agincourt " and " The Storming of Seringapatam " ; but 
he painted both from descriptions and fancy, and was present at 
neither. He was, however, with Sir John Moore at the siege of Co- 
runna, and probably took part in the " burial " of the General when 
they 

" Buried him darkly at dead of night, 
The sods with their bayonets turning." 

He had been appointed historical painter to the Emperor of Russia, 
and married a Russian princess. He died at St. Petersburg, of apo- 
plexy, in 1842.* 

Sheridan Knowles. — Poor Sherry ! the last time I saw him 
was at a dinner given by a gentleman, who may surely claim a line 
in this assemblage of memories, Dr. Andrew Ure, a man to whom 
the world is indebted for a work of great value — " A Dictionary of 
Arts, Manufactures, and Mines." Though Sheridan Knowles was 
then already failing, it was before he became a Baptist minister, 
which he did in 1852, but after his second marriage — an incident that 
all his friends lamented. Well I remember his acting the part of 
Master Walter in his play of The Hunchback in 1832. It was a great 
success — the play, I mean, not the impersonation, for an actor Sheri- 
dan Knowles was not. He lived a long life, and did not waste it. 

* A nephew of excellent John Britton, the renowned antiquary (one of Sir 
Robert's best and most valued friends), wrote, in 1880, a description of the two 
great pictures. " The Storming of Seringapatam " was 200 feet long : it is said 
to have been painted in six weeks ! As regards the " Battle of Agincourt," Mr. 
Britton printed the following statement : 

" Regarding the history of the immense painting of Agincourt in the posses- 
sion of the Corporation, it appears, by minutes of the Court of Common Council 
so far back as September 22, 1808, that a letter was read from Robert Ker Porter, 
Esq., dated Stockholm, May 19th, addressed to Lord Mayor Ansley, requesting 
his Lordship to present ' the large picture of the Battle of Agincourt, my last, and 
I think best work, to the City of London. The subject is so grateful to the patri- 
otic breast of every Briton that I need not comment on its propriety as a recom- 
mendation rendering it worthy a place either in the Mansion House or the Guild- 
hall. To know that the capital of my native country possesses the last of my 
productions will be an ample and valuable recompense for my exertions in having 
produced it.' Thanks were ordered to be returned, by the Lord Mayor, and the 
Committee for Letting the City Lands was requested ' to consider the best place to 
display the picture.' It was hung up in the Egyptian Hall, Mansion House, but 
removed to enable certain alterations to be made in that room, and consigned to 
oblivion for about twelve years. It was then disentombed, in 1823, and hung up at 
Guildhall, crowds of people flocking thither to see it. Then, although its preserva- 
tion and public display were advocated by members of the Corporation, it was 
rolled up and again committed to its former sepulchre under the Hall. It seems 
afterward to have been taken out, unrolled, and hung up for a week or two every 
three or four years to ' keep it from perishing ! ' This brings its history down to 
about 1850. In a letter to the late John Britton, May 15, 1851, Mr. John Sewell 
says, 'It is a fine performance, fit to be exhibited as a panoramic painting, and I 
think it is a pity it should remain lost to the public' " 

Where the picture now is, it will be for others to find out. 



THE SISTERS JEWSBURY. 389 

Up to a good old age he was healthy and hearty. Macready de- 
scribed to me their first interview, when the actor received the dram- 
atist in the green-room. Sheridan Knowles presented himself — a 
jolly-looking fellow, with red cheeks, a man obviously full of buoy- 
ancy and good-humor — and read to the great manager his tragedy 
of Virginius. " What ! " cried Macready, half-pleasantly, half-seri- 
ously, when the reading was over, " you the author of that tragedy 
— you ? Why you look more like the captain of a Leith smack ! " 

Nature had endowed Sheridan Knowles with a rare gift, but it 
was not improved by learning or study, and he owed little, if any- 
thing, to his great predecessors in dramatic art. 

In his later days, as I have remarked, the celebrated dramatist 
became a Baptist minister. I regret now that I never heard him 
preach, although I am told it was a performance that one might 
have been satisfied to witness only once. But I am sure that, what- 
ever and wherever he was, in the pulpit or on the stage, Sheridan 
Knowles was in earnest — simple, honest, and hearty always. His 
was a nature that remained thoroughly unspoiled by extraordinary 
success. He was born at Cork in 1784, and died at Torquay in 1862. 

The Sisters Jewsbury. — In September, 1880, I was present 
at the burial of Geraldine Jewsbury in the cemetery at Brompton. 
Her grave is adjacent to that of her friend Lady Morgan. Geral- 
dine had attained the age of sixty-eight. Her many published works 
bear witness to her industry as well as ability. We knew her when 
she was little more than a child, and had much affection for her dur- 
ing the whole of her long life. Her health was never good ; it would 
have surprised none of her friends to have heard of her death much 
earlier than it occurred. She lived in her latter years at a pretty 
cottage at Sevenoaks, but died at an excellent institution for invalid 
ladies in Burwood Place, where we frequently visited her. Her 
mind was not weakened by illness, and it was in a happy state of 
preparation for the change that was inevitable. Among the very 
earliest of our literary friends was her sister Mary Jane, whose 
signature, M. J. J., obtained wide celebrity between the years 1825 
and 1830. In 1832 she was married, in a little church among the 
Welsh mountains, to the Rev. W. K. Fletcher, one of the chaplains 
of the Hon. East India Company. She accompanied him to India, 
and fourteen months after her marriage she was laid in the grave 
at Poonah, a victim to cholera. 

It was a brief life, but not inglorious ; she has left much that is 
calculated to do good, and merit, if not obtain, fame. Mrs. Hemans 
much loved her, and wore mourning for her ; and great Wordsworth 
was proud to call himself her friend.* 

* Soon after her death Mrs. Hemans conveyed this message to Wordsworth : 
" Will you tell Mr. Wordsworth this anecdote of poor Mrs. Fletcher? I am sure 
it will interest him. During the time that the famine in the Deccan was raging, 



390 LEIGH HUNT. 

She had a foreboding of early death. In one of her latest letters 
before leaving England she wrote : 

" In the best of everything I have done you will find one leading idea — 
Death ; all thoughts, all images, all contrasts of thoughts and images, are 
derived from living much in the valley of that shadow." 

One of her letters to Mrs. Hall contains this passage : "I am 
melancholy by nature ; cheerful on principle." 

Mary Jane Jewsbury was thus one of the earliest friends we lost, 
as her sister Geraldine was one of the latest — nearly half a century 
having elapsed between the death of the one and the death of the 
other. 

Leigh Hunt. — Some fifteen years ago, I ascertained that the 
grave of my old friend Leigh Hunt was without a memorial stone to 
mark his resting-place in the cemetery at Kensal Green. It was a 
reproach to all who knew him, and hardly less so to those who were 
familiar with his books. I desired to remove it, set to work, and 
after some delay and difficulty the movement took satisfactory shape, 
and it was done * Less useful men of letters have their stately 
monuments in Westminster Abbey. At all events those who seek 
for Leigh Hunt's grave among the many illustrious dead who lie in 
Kensal Green Cemetery may now be assured of finding it. A pillar, 
surmounted by a bust, the production of the sculptor, Joseph Dur- 
ham, marks the spot, and on it is inscribed the memorable line from 
the most famous and beautiful of all his poems, " Write me as one 
who loves his fellow-men," and also a line written concerning him 
by Lord Lytton, " He had that chief requisite of a good critic — a 
good heart." 

It was a bright day when the monument at Kensal Green was 
uncovered, and a touching and eloquent address was delivered at 
the grave by Lord Houghton. The reproach that had endured from 

she heard that a poor Hindoo had been found lying dead in one of the temples at 
the foot of an idol, and with a female child, still living, in his arms. She and her 
husband immediately repaired to the spot, took the poor little orphan away with 
them, and conveyed it to their own home. She tended it assiduously, and one of 
her last cares was to have it placed at a female missionary school, to be brought 
up as a Christian." 

* The Committee was not large, but it contained the names of Carlyle, Dickens, 
George Godwin, Macready, Sir Percy Shelley, Procter, Robert Chambers, and Sir 
Frederick Pollock. There were one hundred and twenty-two subscribers, among 
whom were Lord Lytton, Mr. (now Sir Theodore) Martin, Earl Russell, Mr. and 
Mrs. E. M. Ward, Edmund Yates, W. H. Russell, John Bright, Martin Tupper, 
Blanchard Jerrold, J. R. Planche, Edwin Arnold, Tom Hood, jr., Alexander Ire- 
land, Charles Knight, Albany Fonblanque, John Forster, Sir Charles Dilke, 
Wilkie Collins, Sir Rowland Hill, etc. The sum collected amounted to .£218 13J. 
8</., which sufficed. George W. Childs, of the Public Ledger, Philadelphia, offered 
to furnish the whole estimated sum : that generous offer I declined ; but I accepted 
from him a large subscription in aid. 



LEIGH HUNT. 



391 



1859, the year when he died (in High Street, Putney) — two months 
before he had completed his seventy-fifth year — was removed by 
the erection of the monument on the 19th of October, 1869 (his 
birthday). 

He was born at Southgate in 1784, and, like Coleridge and Lamb, 
was educated at Christ's Hospital. 

I did not know Leigh Hunt in his prime ; but I knew him well 
when he lived at Edwardes Square, Kensington. He was then 
yielding gradually to the universal conqueror. His son tells us, " He 
was usually seen in a dressing-gown, bending his head over a book 
or over a desk." Tall and upright still, his hair white and strag- 
gling, scattered over a brow of manly intelligence, his eyes retaining 
much of their old brilliancy combined with gentleness, his conversa- 
tion still sparkling, though by fits and starts — he gave me the idea 
of a sturdy ruin that, in donning the mossy vest of time, had been 
recompensed for gradual decay of strength by gaining ever more 
and more of the picturesque. 

One of the latest passages of his autobiography is this : " I seem 
— and it has become a consolation to me — to belong as much to the 
next world as to this." 

His son tells us that his whole life was one of pecuniary difficulty. 
It was a mournful fact — one from which a dismal picture might 
easily be painted, and a dreary moral educed. Though there is no 
stigma of dishonor resting on his memory, Hunt was too ready, as 
so many men of letters had been before him, to live — 

" As if life's business were a summer mood, 
As if all needful things would come unsought 
To genial faith." 

The words that I have italicized seem to me to be an epitome of 
Leigh Hunt's life. 

Savage Landor told me a story that remarkably illustrates the 
simplicity, as well as the heedlessness, of his character. Sir Percy 
Shelley made him an allowance of _^i2oa year. One day Hunt 
called upon the Baronet, and said, " As you intend to give me that 
sum as long as I live, I ask you to extend the favor by putting on 
paper a memorandum to that effect." Sir Percy, startled, asked 
him — why? "Oh, only," said Hunt, "because it would be easier to 
raise money upon it." I need not say that was the very thing his 
generous friend had intended his bounty to prevent. Among the 
most constant of Leigh Hunt's friends — as to loans — was the good 
man Horace Smith ; but, in fact, he had many such. In his turn he 
was ever ready — no matter how straitened his circumstances might 
be — to open his house or his purse to any friend that stood in need 
of his hospitality or his aid. 

Testimonies to his kindly, sympathizing, and affectionate nature 
are abundant. His famous sonnet, " Abou ben Adhem," may have 



392 



LEIGH HUNT. 



been inspired by an Eastern apothegm, but it was none the less an 
outpouring of his own large heart. As for his life it was one of the 
utmost simplicity and frugality ; indeed, he carried the latter virtue 
to such an extreme that his son, in writing to me, describes his 
father's diet as consisting often only of bread. 

The following is a passage from one of his writings : 

" Surely there are myriads of beings everywhere inhabiting their respective 
spheres, both visible and invisible, all perhaps inspired with the same task of 
trying how far they can extend happiness. Some may have realized their 
heaven and are resting. Some may be helping ourselves, just as we help 
the bee or the wounded bird : spirits, perhaps of dear friends who pity our 
tears, who rejoice in our smiles, and whisper into our hearts belief that they 
are present. 

Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth, 
Unseen both when we wake and when we sleep." 

Perhaps the tropical blood which his friend Hazlitt said ran in 
his veins had its share in inducing his disposition to let all things 
take their course, with a cheerful faith that in the end they would 
come right — somehow ! Though a tithe of the annoyances and 
privations he endured would have prepared for most other people 
a nightly bed of thorns, he did not seem to heed them, or, indeed, 
to give to their memory a painful thought. Struggling half his life 
in muddy waters, he usually had a haven — even if only a fancied 
one — in sight, and was confident he would reach land somewhere. 
No man was more easily contented ; of the joys of the epicure and 
the sybarite he no more thought than of swallowing pebbles by the 
seaside. His feasts were really the feasts of the poets.* 

It was Leigh Hunt who wrote for me the memoirs of Keats and 
Shelley in the " Book of Gems." 

" No man," his son wrote to me, " had a more abiding sense of 
religion ; . . . the authority of his mind was Christ himself, whose 
example and preaching he continually held up as the one most neg- 
lected and most to be followed." But Hunt was not, in the true 
sense of the word, a Christian. He recognized Jesus only as a 
" martyred brother " of Confucius, Socrates, and Antoninus — noth- 
ing more. Dying, he had not the joyful hope of the Christian to 
sustain him, but could only breathe as a parting prayer the infinitely 
less rational and less consoling aspiration, " May we all meet in 
one of Plato's vast cycles of re-existence." Alas ! f 

* Thornton Hunt in a letter to me, dated January 4, 1865, said : " I have read 
your memory of my dear father (in the ' Book of Memories '), and I trace in it the 
hand of a friendly, sympathetic man. I do not suggest the slightest alteration 
in it." 

f His son, Mr. Thornton Hunt, thus touches on the subject of his father's relig- 
ious views in a letter written to me soon after the publication in the Art Journal of 
my " Memory of Leigh Hunt " : 

" He followed Schiller in his estimate of Moses as a grand reformer : he was 
constantly referring to Scripture, with which he was familiar, especially the New 



JEREMY BENTHAM. 393 

Jeremy Bentham. — One day, very many years ago, I met Dr. 
Bowring in St. James's Park. He was on his way to Queen's 
Square to visit Jeremy Bentham. He offered to introduce me to 
him — an offer I gladly accepted. He was pacing in his garden when 
we arrived. 

Bentham was then nearly eighty-five years of age, of very strik- 
ing appearance, his long white locks floating about a magnificent 
head, the intellectual organs strongly prominent, the expression full 
of benevolence, with a smile generous and thoroughly sympathetic. 

I quote a passage from the New Monthly (1832) — the year in 
which he died — written, I believe, by Bulwer : 

" Personally, Mr. Bentham was like so many other great men, all sim- 
plicity and playfulness. He had that thorough amiability which arises from 
the warmest benevolence. He was without guile — the very antipodes of a 
worldly man : he who could unfold all the secrets of jurisprudence and legis- 
lation, and lay down regulations for the accurate conduct of whole nations, 
and resolve society and human nature into their last elements, was as simple 
as a child, and lived in the center of a vast capital, as far removed from act- 
ual contact with the world as if he had seated himself on the Andes." 

I may add another passage from that paper : 

" He died, it seems, as he would have gone to sleep — this was sure to be 
the case with the calmest, pleasantest, and most innocent body that ever par- 
took of mortal frailties. His long life passed in perfect, though far from ro- 
bust, health ; he was never, in all his scores of years, guilty of an excess ; his 
fame had never been stained, for a moment, with intemperance : the old man 
left his body as pure as that of a child." 

Yes, it is a gratifying memory to me now — as I accounted it a 
high privilege then — to have looked on that great man while in life, 
to have beheld that nobly-molded head, that most benevolent face, 
in which almost child-like simplicity contended with godlike intel- 
lect, both blended in universal sympathy, while his loose gray hair 
streamed over his shoulders and played in the wind as he pursued 
his evening walk of meditation, around the very garden wherein the 
poet-patriot John Milton was erst accustomed to think his mighty 
thoughts. 

Mrs. Balfour. — A most good and sweet and very beautiful 
woman (though aged threescore and ten) left earth when Clara 
Lucas Balfour was called from it to do her Master's work elsewhere. 
Not long before that we had taken part in a joyous ceremony — the 
celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of her wedding-day. Husband 
and wife had been joint-toilers in Christian labor in the fertile fields 
of sin and suffering, of crime and misery, to be found at the East- 
Testament : in opinion he was very near the Unitarians. He had a perfect confi- 
dence in a future existence, often citing an English bishop, who said that "heaven 
is first a temper and then a place." 



394 CHARLES DICKENS. 

end of London. They were but a short while separated by death, 
and are now reunited. Both of these zealous workers had, by writ- 
ings, preachings, and lectures, led many of the seeming lost into the 
paths of peace. It was a large array of " the repentant " that good 
woman conducted to the foot of the great white throne. It demands 
but little force of fancy to see them gather round her, when she 
crossed the celestial river and rested on its heavenward side. She 
was one of the emphatically good — good in all the relations of life 
— and they ought not to have been mourners who, at the Kilburn 
Cemetery, saw her remains (as I did) laid in earth on Monday, July 



Charles Dickens. — So much has been written concerning 
Dickens — he occupied such a prominent position in life and in let- 
ters — that any lengthened comments respecting him are needless on 
my part. It is a general opinion that his biographer did not ful- 
fill his task in such a manner as to do justice to its theme : the three 
big volumes have been not inaptly described as " Memoirs of John 
Forster and Charles Dickens." 

I knew the great novelist when he was a boy ; again in the days 
of his early celebrity, while he was still a bachelor ; and later, Mrs. 
Hall and I were present at the christening of his first-born. We 
had known Mrs. Dickens also while she was Miss Catherine Ho- 
garth. 

Much has been said on the unhappy subject of their separation, 
and some of the most unfortunate utterances were those put in print 
by Dickens himself at the time. It is a theme that all will feel 
bound to treat with a reserve similar to that discreetly maintained 
by his biographer. Undoubtedly, sympathy was largely felt for Mrs. 
Dickens — and rightly so. 

I well remember my sensations of astonishment and interest when 
the first number of " Pickwick " was brought me, and I looked it 
over. Forster was with me at the time. How, on the introduction 
of Sam Weller, the work took the town by storm, and its author, 
who, only a short time before, had been an unnoticed parliamentary 
reporter, reached at a bound the summit of success, and became the 
literary lion of the day, I need not here describe. 

No man since Walter Scott has so amply and efficiently supplied 
in fiction the intellectual need of the age ; but that great man did 
not do a tithe of what Dickens has done to quicken its social and 
moral progress. Further eulogium is unnecessary : but I can not 
resist a desire to quote this passage from Charles Dickens's last will 
and testament : 

" I commit my soul to the mercy of God, through our Lord and Saviour, 
Jesus Christ ; and I exhort my dear children to try to guide themselves by 
the teaching of the New Testament in its broad spirit, and to put no faith in 
any man's narrow construction of its letter." 



LETITIA LANDON. 



395 



I have elsewhere in these volumes alluded to the circumstances 
under which I first made acquaintance with Charles Dickens — so 
far back as the year 1826. Who would have dreamt then that 
the intelligent-looking lad who, from time to time, brought " penny- 
a-line " matter to the office of the newspaper on which his father 
was a parliamentary reporter, would one day be laid, amid national 
grief, in the mausoleum of our British worthies, while over the grave 
that would receive his body an eloquent funeral sermon would be 
preached by a high dignitary of the Church, proclaiming Charles 
Dickens one of the foremost teachers of his time ? 

As I can write of Dickens nothing new, nothing important, noth- 
ing valuable, as I can make only very trifling additions to what is 
known to the whole world of readers, I prefer the course I adopt, and 
leave the subject comparatively untouched. 

Letitia Elizabeth Landon. — Of the grave of this unhappy 
poetess at Cape Coast Castle Dr. Madden thus writes in the 
' Memoirs of Lady Blessington " : 

" A few common tiles distinguish it from the graves of the various mili- 
tary men who have perished in this stronghold of pestilence. Her grave is 
daily trampled over by the soldiers of the fort. The morning blast of the 
bugle, and roll of the drum, are the sounds that have been thought most in 
unison with the spirit of the gentle being who sleeps below the few red tiles 
where the soldiers on parade do congregate. There is not a plant, nor a 
blade of grass, nor anything green, in that courtyard, on which the burning 
sun blazes down all day long. And this is the place where they have buried 
L. E. L. ! " 

Her fame, like herself, is but a memory now. But how bright it 
was half a century ago ! — how intoxicating ! So quickly won, too, 
that she might, like Byron, have written, "I awoke one morning and 
found myself famous." Alas ! Dead-Sea fruit, indeed, was to her 
the fruit of her genius — of all the women of letters whose pens have 
assisted feminine charms to make them famous and flattered, few 
have been more completely miserable ; none can I bring to mind 
who ever closed a career of brilliant unhappiness by a death so trag- 
ical. Her marriage wrecked her life ; but before that fatal mistake 
was made, slander had been busy with her fair fame — the slander that 
most cruelly wounds a woman. She took refuge from it in union 
with a man utterly incapable of appreciating her or making her 
happy, and went out with him to his government at the Gold Coast — 
to die. And not even — tragical as such an ending would have been 
to the career of the applauded writer, the flattered woman — to wither 
before the pestilential influences that steam up from that wilderness 
of swamp and jungle ; but to die a violent death — a fearful one — 
and to leave to the coroner's inquest, that the manner of her end 
made necessary, the task of delicately veiling under a verdict of ac- 
cident the horrid doubts that her fate suggested. Suicide or murder 



396 letitia landon. 

— which was it, the voice of the public of that day asked, that had 
so tragically closed the career of the gifted " L. E. L." ? For my 
part, that unhappy " L. E. L." was murdered I never had a doubt. 
Her marriage in 1838 to Maclean, who had accidentally met her 
during a visit he paid to England while he was Governor of the Gold 
Coast, was speedily followed by her departure with her husband for 
what was to prove her grave. She landed at Cape Coast Castle in 
July, 1838, and on the 15th of October she was dead — dying, accord- 
ing to the verdict of a coroner's inquest, from having accidentally 
taken a dose of prussic acid. But where was she to have procured 
that poison ? I learned by inquiry from her physician that it was 
not among the contents of the medicine-chest she took out from 
England, and I have no reason to suppose that any one at Cape 
Coast Castle was guilty of the culpable negligence of accidentally 
leaving it in her way. 

When the ship that bore them to Africa arrived in port, Mac- 
lean left her on board while he went to arrange matters on shore. 
A negro woman was there, with four or five children — his children ; 
she had to be sent into the interior to make room for her legitimate 
successor. It is understood the negress was the daughter of a king ; 
at all events she was of a race " with whom revenge is a virtue," 
and from the moment " L. E. L." landed her life was at the mercy 
of her rival ; that by her hand she was done to death I am all but 
certain, although in the only letter she wrote to Mrs. Hall from 
Africa she assumed an air of cheerfulness and content. 

It was a fate that many of her friends foreboded. I was not at 
her wedding, where her friend Bulwer Lytton gave her away. Few 
were ; but not many days afterward I was one of a party assembled 
at the house that was then her home, to bid the wedded pair fare- 
well. It chanced that I was the oldest of her friends present ; it was 
therefore my duty to make her the congratulatory speech. I threw 
into it as much feeling as I could, appealed to Mrs. Hall for con- 
firmation of my statement that during many years we had known 
her intimately, each year having increased our affection, regard, and 
respect, which she could not have so long and continuously retained 
if they had not been earned and merited. It was, indeed, but an 
emphatic mode of confuting slanders that had embittered her life, 
and of which, no doubt, her husband had heard. The bride wept ; 
the bridegroom replied. It will not be difficult to guess our feelings 
when we heard this reply : " If what Mr. Hall says of my wife be 
true, I wonder you let her go away from you " ; that was all he 
said ! Laman Blanchard looked at me and I at him, and on after- 
ward comparing notes we found that a similar gloomy foreboding of 
her future doom had seized us both. 

Poor child, poor girl, poor woman, poor wife, poor victim — from 
the cradle to the grave, it was an unhappy life ! I have seldom seen 
her merry, that the laugh was not followed by a sigh. 



LETITIA LAN DON. 



397 



Her poems and her novels are but little read now ; the latter 
have not been reprinted, the former are forgotten ; but between the 
years 1825 and 1845 she occupied a very prominent position ; her 
admirers were the whole reading British public. I have, I think, 
done justice to her in the "Book of Memories." I can not find 
space here to go into the history of the slander breathed against her ; 
but Mrs. Hall is authority sufficient to brand as calumnies the whis- 
pers that pursued her during the later years of a grievous and 
mournful career. 

For, perhaps, years before her departure from England she had 
lived as an inmate at a boarding-school, 22 Hans Place,* where a 
number of young ladies were educated. That fact alone might have 
sufficed to silence the slanders that assailed her. She there received 
her friends, and seldom a week passed that she was not a visitor at 
our house in Sloane Street — close by. 

Mrs. Hall, writing in 1839 of Miss Landon, says, "How evanes- 
cent were her smiles, how weary were her sighs ! " and pictured her 
then as very fascinating. Small of person, but well formed ; her 
dark silken hair braided back over a small, but, what phrenologists 
would call, a well-developed, head ; her forehead full and open, but 
the hair grew low upon it ; the eyebrows perfect in arch and form ; 
the eyes round — soft, or flashing, as might be — gray, well formed, 
and beautifully set, the lashes long and black, the under-lashes turn- 
ing down with delicate curve, and forming a soft relief upon the tint 
of her cheek, which, when she enjoyed good health, was bright and 
blushing ; her complexion was delicately fair ; her skin soft and 
transparent ; her nose small (retrouss^), slightly curved, but capable 
of scornful expression, which she did not appear to have the power 
of repressing, even though she gave her thoughts no words, when 
any despicable action was alluded to. 

"Weary, beset with privations, unkindnesses, disappointments, 
ever struggling against absolute poverty " — these were the mournful 
words " L. E. L." applied to herself. In one of her letters to Mrs. 
Hall she wrote : " Envy, malice, and all uncharitableness — these are 
the fruits of a successful literary career for a woman." Thank God, 
there are many happy exceptions ! To one of them I shall refer 
in this book. 

I have placed her maiden name at the head of this chapter ; let 
the one she bore for so short a time be forgotten. On the evening 
of her death she was buried in the courtyard of Cape Coast Castle. 
The grave was dug by torchlight amid a pitiless torrent of rain : 

* Her constant companion, fellow-inmate, and faithful friend, was Miss Emma 
Roberts — the author of some pleasant and useful books. She went to India and 
died there, comparatively young. 

Miss Landon used to say of Hans Place, that the single policeman whose sole 
duty it was to stroll up and down and look at nothing, petitioned his superior for 
removal on the ground that its loneliness was draining the life out of him. 



398 LAMAN BLANCHARD. 

active workmen hurried through their dismal work, and her body- 
was put out of sight. Mrs. Hall and I strove to raise money to place 
a monument there ; but objection was made, and the project was 
abandoned. Lady Blessington directed a slab to be placed at her 
expense on the wall. That, also, was objected to. But her husband, 
for very shame, at last permitted it to be done, and a mural tablet 
records that in that African courtyard rests all that is mortal of 
Letitia Elizabeth Maclean. 

Laman Blanchard published a biography of " L. E. L." It is 
kind, generous, and full of interest. He was a dear friend of ours : 
we had introduced him to the poetess. As a poet, essayist, and edi- 
tor he took prominent and honorable rank. A more estimable man 
I have rarely known. He died sadly ; his mind had become gloom- 
ily o'ercast by the death of his admirable wife, to whom he was de- 
votedly attached. He died in a moment of madness, brought on by 
despondency that had reached despair. 

As an editor — first of the True Sun, and afterward of the Courier 
— both papers long ago extinct — he was liberal, discriminating, just ; 
as a critic sound, generous, and upright. I drew his character at 
that time, as I draw it now : " The eloquent and tender poet ; the 
brave advocate of natural rights ; the brimful and active but gen- 
erous wit ; the sterling and steadfast essayist ; the searching yet in- 
dulgent critic." He was all that. 

" The sunny temper, bright where all is strife ; 
The simple heart that mocks at worldly wiles ; 
Light wit that plays along the calm of life, 
And stirs its languid surface into smiles." 

His godson, the son of Douglas Jerrold — who has made for him- 
self a high renown, both as a man of letters and a political writer — 
married Blanchard's daughter, and they have many children, who 
may have inherited the genius of both grandsires — the wit of the 
one and the genial nature of the other. 

Of a thoroughly opposite nature to the kindly biographer of " L. 
E. L." was Douglas Jerrold. They both had their trials — the 
one succumbed to, the other defied and defeated, them. How dif- 
ferent their characters, how opposite their fates ! Jerrold lived to 
be a prosperous man ; but no one ever accused him of generosity or 
sympathy ; his wit, which, unlike that of his associate, often 
" Carried a heart-stain away on its blade," 

was ever biting, bitter, and caustic, and careless as to distinguishing 
friend from foe. Many of his brilliant bonsmots and witticisms are 
current in literary cliques ; but I have rarely heard one repeated 
that was not calculated to give somebody pain. Long neglect, 
doubtless, soured his temper, and when reputation and comparative 



WILLIAM JERDAN. 399 

wealth came to him — somewhat late in life, and, I believe, after years 
of privation — they found him, like the wholesome draught which 
the thunder-storm has converted into a sour and deleterious drink. 

Few countenances expressed a character more truthfully than 
did that of Jerrold ; it was highly intellectual, but severe, and ex- 
ceedingly sarcastic — just that of one whom a prudent man would 
not covet for a foe, and would hardly expect to hail as a friend. 

William Jerdan first appeared in print so long ago as 1804.* 
During many years the Literary Gazette, of which he was the editor 
from 181 7 to 1850, was a power in the Press ; its good or ill word 
went far to make or mar an author's reputation, and the sale of a 
book was often large or limited according to its fiat. It is but jus- 
tice to him to say he " did his spiriting gently," and was far less given 
to centure than to praise. It is true that in his later years he was, 
as Hawthorne said of him, " time-worn, but not reverend " ; yet in 
old age he retained much of his pristine vigor, and when he was 
past eighty could be, and often was, witty in words and eloquent in 
speech. Yet his life is not a life to emulate, and certainly not one 
for laudation. Many liked, without respecting, him. No doubt he 
was of heedless habits, no doubt he cared little for the cost of self- 
gratification, and was far too lightly guided all his life long by high 
and upright principles ; but I for one will not turn a deaf ear to the 
prayer, that is half an apology, to which he gives utterance in his 
autobiography — a hope " that some fond and faithful regret might 
embalm the memory of the sleeper, who can never wake more to 
participate in a sorrow and bestow a solace, listen to distress, and 
bring it relief, serve a friend and forgive a foe, perform his duties as 
perfectly as his human frailty allowed, never willfully doing injury to 
man, woman, or child, and loving his neighbors of one sex as him- 
self, and of the other better." 

Unhappily he wrote another passage — at least as true : " I have 
drained the Circe cup to the dregs ! " Alas ! the dregs were perni- 
cious to heart, mind, and soul. 

Jerdan, although always intensely occupied with his editorial 
labors on the Gazette, was a voluminous author ; in 1830 he edited 
and wrote nearly the whole of the " National Portrait Gallery," short 
and pithy yet comprehensive sketches of character based on interest- 
ing facts. There are few works so good of the period, or of any 
period. 

He left an autobiography ; considering his vast opportunities it 

* He was born at Kelso in 1782, and died at Bushy Heath, Kent, in 1869. 
Not long before his death I heard him make an earnest and impressive speech at 
the Society of Noviomagus : of which society — although then retired from it — he 
had long been a prominent member. He was eighty-five years old and in mar- 
velous vigor, notwithstanding the gay life he had led for nearly three quarters of a 
century. 



400 



ALLAN CUNNINGHAM. 



is deficient in interest, of little use for reference, and giving us but a 
shadowy idea of the many great men and women to whom it makes 
reference, and whom he had personally known. Indeed, he had 
personally known nearly all who flourished during the second quar- 
ter of the nineteenth century. I have myself vainly sought in his 
four volumes for the help he might have given — and ought to have 
given — the writers who should come after him. 

I wish I could say something to honor the memory of William 
Jerdan, for personally I owed him much ; I had always his good 
word, and so had my wife ; there is no one of her books that did 
not receive generous and cordial praise in the Literary Gazette. I 
grieve that now he is in his grave I can give so little for so much. 

Allan Cunningham. — I owe a tribute of grateful memory to 
Allan Cunningham, not only for the friendship he gave us, but that 
at his house, 27 Lower Belgrave Place (near to the atelier of the 
sculptor Chantrey, whose works he " oversaw " and directed), I met 
several of the celebrities I might not otherwise have known — notably 
Scott and Southey. The inscription I would place over his grave in 
Kensal Green is this : 

" Love him, for he loved Nature ! " 

That love was as strong in him after long years of toil in London 
as it was when in early youth he wooed the Muse in the dales of the 
Scottish shire he dearly loved, and of which he was fondly proud. 

He was born in 1784, came to London in 1810, and having soon 
after written to persuade the bonnie Scottish lassie he had wooed in 
green Nithsdale to follow him, married her in July of the following 
year. Honest, sturdy, loving, true, seldom did a better man take 
service in the ranks of " Letters " : for Allan was, " by profession," 
an author, although authorship was in his case the staff and not the 
crutch. 

He was a tall man, powerful of frame, and apparently of an iron 
constitution. Of a genial, kindly, courteous nature, these qualities 
gained for him not only esteem but affection, yet to the last he gave 
the idea of a man self-taught, or rather whose teacher was Nature ; 
and his tongue, always when he warmed to a subject, smacked of the 
heather. There is a pile of granite reared over his grave in Kensal 
Green — granite from Aberdeen it is true — but it would seem more 
in keeping with the memory of Allan Cunningham if daisies grew 
where he was laid : or as his friend Theodore Martin wrote, in a 
noble poem that commemorated the burial of Campbell : 
" Better after-times should find him — 
To his rest in homage bound, 
Lying in the land that bore him, 
With its glories piled around." 

His admirable wife, the bonnie Jean of his earlier poems, rests 
by his side. They were little more than children when they loved 



MARRY AT. 



401 



first ; they were still young when a prospect of independence to be 
won by hard toil encouraged them to marry. I do not think it can 
offend any one of their descendants if I relate an anecdote that does 
special honor to the wife. Mrs. Cunningham, calling one afternoon 
on Mrs. Hall, told her she had had visitors that morning. Her old 
master and mistress from Dumfries had visited London, and of 
course had called upon Mr. and Mrs. Cunningham. The servant 
brought in cake and wine ; Mrs. Cunningham took from her hands 
the tray, closed the door upon her, and with her own hands offered 
the refreshments to her guests. As she told the touching little story, 
her Scottish accent seemed to become more broadly Doric, when she 
said, " I wasna goin' to let anybody but mysel' wait upon my, auld 
master and mistress." I have never known a better example than 
Mrs. Cunningham of what natural grace and purity can do to pro- 
duce refinement. Though peasant-born, she was in society a lady — 
thoroughly so. Not only was there no shadow of vulgarity in her 
manners, there was not even rusticity, while there was a total ab- 
sence of assumption and pretense. 

I reluctantly refer to their son Peter, although his name is hon- 
ored in Letters as that of a successful worker in fields somewhat fal- 
low when he wrote. His researches into the history and remains of 
Old London are especially valuable, and of great use to all who fol- 
low in his wake. Most unhappily he impaired intellectual vigor and 
destroyed life, by habits of intemperance — the curse of so many of 
large capacity, whose promise was thus negatived and blighted be- 
fore the flower had produced the seed. 

Two other sons of Allan became general officers in the India 
Company's service. One, if not both, have left sons to inherit the 
honored name : honor which both these estimable officers fully 
maintained. 

Captain Marryat. — A thorough sailor to outward seeming 
was Frederick Marryat, the greatest of all the writers of sea-stories ; 
and a sailor in truth he was — daring, energetic, and brave, thought- 
ful, far-seeing, and enterprising. One fancied the scent of tar was 
clinging to his thick-set, manly frame. At least that is the way I call 
him to memory. He died, after having done an immense amount of 
work afloat and ashore, in the vigor of his life, in 1848, when he was 
but fifty-six years old ; his daughter tells us, " He was murmuring 
passages from the Lord's Prayer when he fell asleep — a shiver passed 
over him and he was gone." 

His sister, Mrs. Bury Palisser, author of several excellent and 
useful books, was during many years our frequent and always wel- 
come visitor. She was one of the much-esteemed friends of Baron 
Cuvier, at whose house we first met her in 1830. A very kind, 
charming, and most intellectual lady she was, and very handsome. 
26 



4 02 MRS. JAMESON. 

Many of her most valuable writings, on china and lace more espe- 
cially, she contributed to the Art Journal. 

John Banim died in his native city, Kilkenny, in 1842, at the 
early age of forty-five. Poor fellow, he was in deplorably bad health 
all his life. I knew the author of the " O'Hara Tales " — their joint- 
author rather with his elder brother, Michael — so long ago as 1822, 
when he was, for a time, my fellow-lodger in the cottage assigned to 
me by Ugo Foscolo, at South Bank, St. John's Wood. He was but 
eighteen when he produced his tragedy of " Damon and Pythias," 
and was the editor of a provincial journal when but seventeen years 
old. At twenty he married a peasant-girl, of much beauty, though 
in delicate health. He began life as an artist, though when he set- 
tled in London, about 1820, he earned a precarious livelihood by 
writing for periodicals, and fame, and a corresponding increase of 
income but slowly overtook him. Subsequently he was awarded one 
of the Crown pensions — £, Y S° a year. 

In 1853 a meeting was held in Dublin, a "Banim Testimonial 
Committee," to render homage to the writer of so many novels ad- 
mirably illustrative of Irish life and character, and to aid in com- 
forting those who were left behind to mourn him — the wife and 
daughter he fondly and devotedly loved. 

Edwin Atherstone was, as his name indicates, of pure Saxon 
descent, and his personal appearance tallied with it. He was of 
herculean build : tall, robust, large-limbed, and handsome, with 
keen blue eyes and flaxen hair, representing fifty generations of 
Saxon ancestors ; yet he died early. He produced a remarkable 
poem of great power, merit, and beauty, which probably not one in a 
hundred thousand has read. Some idea of the nature of this work 
may be formed from its title, "The Fall of Nineveh." It was illus- 
trated by more than one picture painted by his friend John Martin. 

Mrs. Jameson, whose works " do live," was of Irish birth ; her 
father, Mr. Murphy, was miniature-painter to the Princess Charlotte. 
Her husband, a barrister, obtained an appointment in Canada, but 
she did not go with him to that colony ; she remained in London, 
what in her country is called a " grass widow." Yet her husband, to 
whom she introduced us during one of his few visits to England, 
seemed, in all senses of the word, a gentleman — handsome of person, 
amiable in disposition, a man to whom any wife might have been 
fondly attached. During the long period of thirty years she may be 
said to have been a wedded wife without a husband. Why it was so 
was a secret they wisely and rightly kept to themselves. 

Though greatly admired and respected, she was one of the few 
exceptions I have met with as regards Irishwomen — not made to be 
loved. 



HANNAH MORE. 



403 



Her first book, " The Beauties of the Court of Charles II," was 
not a seemly introduction to a literary career in the case of a woman, 
but her name is attached to volumes on holier themes ; her greatest 
work was "Sacred and Legendary Art," commenced in 1848, and 
completed in 1852. Some of her best works appeared originally in 
the Art Journal. 

She was a " liberal " as regards education and religion, and de- 
livered lectures on the grievances that affected her sex — a pioneer 
of the army that has since arisen to wage war for "woman's rights." 

Among literary women such advocates have been, and happily 
continue to be, very few. Indeed, I do not think I could name 
half a dozen of the women who were famous during the first half of 
the nineteenth century, nor do I think there is a greater number of 
those who now live, whom the " strong-minded " of to-day can claim 
as sister-soldiers in the contest for " woman's rights " — as they are 
advocated by some women who wrangle at public meetings and 
annually assail Parliament, so to alter their accustomed legal and 
natural rights as to place woman in all ways on what they term an 
equality with man. 

Hannah More. — In February of the year 1745, when the 
Prince Pretender, the young chevalier, was hiding in the caves at 
Arasaig, trusting his life to needy comrades who would have con- 
signed their souls to Satan sooner than betray him, there was born 
to a poor schoolmaster, at Stapleton, near Bristol, a daughter (one 
of five) who was destined to occupy a premier role in the literary 
history of her country ; and in 1763 there visited Bristol an Irish 
lecturer on rhetoric, companioned by his son, Richard Brinsley 
Sheridan ; among his frequent auditors was a young girl — Hannah 
More. Not long afterward, among her friends were Bishop Porteous, 
David Garrick, William Wilberforce, Samuel Johnson, Edmund 
Burke, John Locke, Gibbon, De Lolme, and Sir Joshua Reynolds — 
names, the sounds of which seem as far off as are those of Harold 
and William the Conqueror. 

In 1825 it was my happiness to visit that lady, Hannah More : 
she was then in her eightieth year ; but much later, in 1832, I was 
again her visitor ; in 1833 she passed from earth to heaven — the 
heaven she had so long and faithfully served ; she has her reward, 
and is again the companion of the good men and women she had 
known on earth. 

Between the day of her birth and that on which I write there are 
nearly one hundred and forty years. 

Barley Wood is at Wrington, a village eight miles from Bristol ; 
the pretty cottage was reached through grounds that contained many 
memorials of her friends : urns that commemorated some worthy 
who was a benefactor, and whose name obtained renown about a 
century and a half ago. She left it not long after we were there, 



404 MARY RUSSELL MITFORD. 

and we again saw her at Richmond Terrace, Bristol. She was in 
sound health and good spirits, enjoying life in the prospect and the 
retrospect. 

At Barley Wood she met us at the door, gave us a cordial greet- 
ing, tripped before us up the stairs to the drawing-room, chatting all 
the way, and at once commenced her task of showing to us the relic- 
reminders of friends gone before. One by one she took them from 
her table, told us what they were, and of whom they were the cher- 
ished gifts. At length she took from a drawer a play-bill, printed in 
the last century ; it was the bill of her tragedy of " Percy," the pro- 
logue and epilogue of which were written by David Garrick. He 
had left the stage some two or three years previously, or he assuredly 
would have acted the part of the hero in that play. At the time 
it was acted, in 1777, and long afterward, it was classed among the 
most successful dramas produced on the British stage. 

I likened her to a benevolent fairy, as she flitted to and fro, her 
very small person clad in pea-green silk. Mrs. Hall has pictured 
her, and that picture I copy : 

" Her form was small and slight ; her features wrinkled with age ; but 
the burden of eighty years had not impaired her gracious smile, nor lessened 
the brilliancy of her eyes : bright and searching, clear and far-seeing eyes 
they were, even then. She tripped from console to console, from window to 
window, to show us some gift that bore a name immortal, some cherished 
reminder of long-ago days — almost of another world, certainly of another age, 
for they were memories of those whose deaths were registered before the 
nineteenth century had birth. 

" Her work was principally for women ; but she never sought to lead 
woman out of her sphere : and it is at once an example to the ' strong- 
minded.' She sought by all means to elevate, and thoroughly succeeded in 
elevating, her sex. She wrote for me in my album this memorable passage : 
' A habit is more powerful than an act : and a previously indulged temper, 
during the day, will not, it is to be feared, be fully counteracted by a few min- 
utes' devotion at night.' " 

Mary Russell Mitford. — Miss Landon called her " Sancho 
Panza in petticoats ; " yet among the lanes and glades of her own 
sunny Berkshire she might have aptly seemed a merry milkmaid — 
proper to the place. Her round figure, jolly face, perpetual smile, 
ready greeting, kindly words, seemed of kin to the nature that is 
away from crowded streets. Assuredly she was more at home at 
Three-Mile Cross than she was in London. In London she seemed 
always en garde, thought an air of patronage the right thing, and 
that an author about whom the whole world was talking, and who 
had achieved the greatest of all literary successes — the production 
of a tragedy — was bound to be stately as well as cordial — to have 
company manners that she would have thrown off as a paralyzing 
incumbrance where the breezes blew among the trees that shaded 
her native heather. I have elsewhere told the story that one even- 



MARY RUSSELL MITFORD. 



405 



ing at our house, soon after " Rienzi " had become town-talk, and 
when she was the observed of all observers, some wags were tittering 
behind her chair ; we ascertained the cause — she wore a huge turban 
utterly out of keeping with her countenance : there was a card 
pinned to it, on which was printed in large letters, " Very chaste ; 
only five and threepence." She had purchased it at Cranbourn 
Alley (then a famous mart for second-class finery), had placed it on 
her head in the carriage, and, not noticing, had not removed the 
ticket. Mrs. Hall, making some pretense to arrange her head-dress, 
unpinned and took away the obnoxious advertisement, and she never 
knew how or why so many wags had been merry at her cost. 

A pleasanter day was that we spent with her at Three-Mile 
Cross, in a small and somewhat dismal cottage with a poor bit of 
garden, which her feeling and fancy had magnified into the perfec- 
tion of a rural retreat — rus in urbe, where her pet greyhound, May- 
flower, gamboled about her feet ; and where the "neighbors," each 
and all of whom she had pictured with graceful and kindly pencil in 
her " sketches," dropped courtesies as she passed.* 

Mary Russell Mitford sleeps in the prettiest of old village church- 
yards, where village lads and lassies pass every Sabbath-day beside 
her grave ; fit resting-place of one whose delight was in picturing 
" the humble loves and simple joys " of the Sylvias and Corydons 
who still gather round an English homestead. I hope her dreams 
are not disturbed at Swallowfield by gas in the highway and the 
scream of the railway-whistle, but that swallows yet build in the cot- 
tage-eaves, and the blackbird's trill is heard among the fragrant 
limes, that the nightingale sings there yet, and that roses still bloom 
in her " Vale of Cashmere." 

There was not much of romance in the career of Miss Mitford ; 
at least, of such little is known. f She lived chiefly with her father 

* They were not angry because of the freedom with which they were treated. 
It was otherwise with Mrs. Hall, who did something of the same kind in her earli- 
est book with her humbler acquaintances and friends ; they were mortally offended, 
"never thought Miss Maria would do the like — putting them in a printed book" ; 
and more than one greeted her with reluctance when she visited her native home ; 
yet it is unnecessary to say they have been portrayed with feelings not only of 
regard but affection. The humbler Irish have always had a horror of " being in 
print." 

f We may accept, however, the piece of luck that gave her, when a child, a 
prize in the lottery. 

On her tenth birthday Dr. Mitford took the child to a lottery-office, and bade 
her select a ticket. She determined — guided, to all appearance, by one of the un- 
accountable whims of childhood — that she would have none other than that num- 
bered 2,224. Some difficulty attended the purchase of the coveted number, but the 
little lottery patroness had her way at last, and on the day of drawing there fell to 
the lot of the happy holder of ticket No. 2,224 a prize of ^20,000. Alas ! the 
holder of the fortunate ticket was happy only in name. By the time his daughter 
was a woman, there remained to Dr. Mitford, of all his lottery adventure had 
brought him, a Wedgwood dinner-service with the family crest ! 



4 o6 MARY RUSSELL MITFORD. 

in sunny Berkshire. He was a selfish old man — drinking, gambling, 
worthless — who having squandered his own money lived upon hers ; 
that which she earned, but did not inherit. 

Miss Mitford was a voluminous correspondent. I do not know 
how many volumes of her letters have been put into print by her 
friend the Rev. A. G. L' Estrange. He has been, however, a generous 
and sympathetic biographer ; * so, indeed, has been another friend, 
much loved and respected by her, Francis Bennoch, F. S. A. To 
give a list that included all her correspondents, literary and artistic, 
would be to give a very long list indeed. I found among my letters 
one from Barbara Hofland to Mrs. Hall, an extract from which, I 
think, is worth giving, principally because of the " fun " it exhibits in 
the attempt to write Irish brogue : 

" Och ! to be sure, my dear honey, and it's your own swate self that is 
quite ignorant of the most wonderfullest, astonishing surprise that is just 
come upon a body, and that has done a body's heart good to think about — 
and niver a word the spalpeen rascals i' the Times has told us about it, be- 
kase, you see, she commanded her nibour to hould their black and white 
tongues, an' niver mention the partickler case. But as to not tellin' o' you, my 
dear, all as I just happen to know, why it's out o' the question, honey — so here 
goes. Miss Mary Mitford is married, honestly married, to one of her own 
kith and kin, a true Mitford of Northumberland, tho' his relationship is a 
mighty way off. And he have taken her down to his own fine estate and 
noble ould mansion, and made her who was a rale lady, just aisy for the rest 
of her days, and her parents aisy too ; and if that isn't good news, I don't know 
what is, honey dear." 

" Life to the last enjoyed " — in " sunny Berkshire " she loved so 
long and so well — Mary Russell Mitford died at Swallowfield on the 
ioth of January, 1855^ Her tragedies may be forgotten, but her 

* Very recently — in 1882 — Mr. L'Estrange published a book of letters to and 
from her, which he terms " The Friendships of Mary Russell Mitford." It is a 
most deeply interesting book ; her correspondence was with a very large number 
of the celebrities of the age. 

Her conversation, Mrs. Barrett Browning considered, " even better than her 
books"; and Mr. Fields writes of her, " Her voice was as a beautiful chime of 
silver bells." 

f " Sunny Berkshire " was a very Arcadia to Mary Russell Mitford : she fought 
for it against all comers. Now and then she was forced into admission that it was 
not quite perfect ; and very reluctantly confessed that its peasants were sometimes 
boors. She told me this story — how one day she was taken aback. A lady was 
walking with her through one of the lanes ; they had a tussle of words : one assert- 
ing, the other denying, that the peasantry lacked natural courtesy and politeness ; 
and both had warmed with the discussion. They had to pass through a gate ; sud- 
denly a boy who was leading a cow started forward and opened the gate for them. 
Miss Mitford was delighted : it was a death-blow to her antagonist. The lady 
was more than surprised : " Ah," said she to the lad, " you're not Berkshire, I'm 
sure ! " This was the answer : " Thec'rt a liar, vor I be ! " I contrasted this illus- 
tration of natural courtesy with an anecdote I have heard my father tell. He was 
in a boat with the daughters of Puxley, of Berehaven ; the six rowers did their best ; 
each was rewarded by a glass of whisky ; but a merry lass of the party aiming to 



HARRISON AINSWORTH. 



407 



village sketches never can be. To them she is indebted for her fame. 
In one of the latest of her letters she writes : " I sit by the open win- 
dow enjoying the balmy air ; . . . The trees, and the sky, and a bit 
of the distant road. . . . My roses are very beautiful, delicately 
sweet, and the common white pinks almost like cloves in their fra- 
grance." 

It is very pleasant to know that her love for the sweet things of 
earth continued up to the brink of the grave, but how far happier, 
for her, it would have been to have known that earth was but a 
preparation for heaven — that the sweetest and brightest of her joys 
here were as dust ! Alas ! we must admit that to the joys to be 
revealed hereafter she gave no thought.* On the 3d of October, 
1854, Mary Russell Mitford murmured, " I cling to life." 

William Harrison Ainsworth died so recently as 1882, in the 
seventy-seventh year of his age. He produced a score, at least, of 
novels, and was for some years the editor of the New Monthly Mag- 
azine, which he purchased (in 1845) from the executors of Colburn. 
Probably at one period of his career he might have boasted that he 
had almost as many readers as Dickens. 

I knew Ainsworth when he obtained an unenviable notoriety by 
his novel of " Jack Sheppard," a work that effected an enormous 
amount of evil. It became a sort of sacred book to the ruffians, 
demireps, and all who were dishonestly or immorally inclined among 
the lowest orders, and, in fact, made, as well as encouraged, thieves 
and other moral and social pests of society. I hope before he died 
he " repented him of the evil." God gave him time in which to 
do so. 

I saw little of him in later days, but when I knew him in 1826, 
not long after he married the daughter of Ebers, of New Bond Street, 
and " condescended " for a brief time to be a publisher, he was a re- 
markably handsome young man — tall, graceful in deportment, and 
in all ways a pleasant person to look upon and talk to. He was, 
perhaps, as thorough a gentleman as his native city of Manchester 
ever sent forth. Few men have lived to be more largely rewarded 
not only by pecuniary recompense, but by celebrity — I can hardly 
call it fame. His antiquarian lore was remarkable, and he made 
brilliant and extensive use of it in his long series of historial ro- 
mances. 

play a joke, observing that one of the boatmen was looking away, dipped the wine- 
glass into the water and presented it to him. He drank it off seemingly without 
notice, returned her the glass, saying, " Thank ye, mee lady," instead of the sput- 
tering she expected. In much astonishment she said, " What, Pat, do you like 
salt-water ? " This was his answer: " No, mee lady, I don't like salt-water ; but 
if yer ladyship had given me a glass of poison, I'd have drank it ! " 

* One of the dearest of her friends writes of her, shortly before her death, 
" Would to God I knew more certainly than I do that the great thing of all is not 
wanting ! " 



4 08 JOHN BRITTON. 

Thomas Haynes Bayly had the ear of the drawing-room fifty 
years ago, and from the pianos and harps, and well-trained voices 
of the polite world, each new song of his speedily made its way to 
the ruder choristers and humbler instruments of the street. " I'd 
be a Butterfly," and " Oh, no ! we never mention Her " exercised the 
hurdy-gurdies and ballad-singers throughout the kingdom. Bayly 
was of a respectable family in Bath, his father having been a so- 
licitor in that city ; and he was himself articled in his youth to an 
attorney, but never followed his profession. He was a thorough 
gentleman, of handsome person and refined manners. His talent 
did not approach genius, but he hit the popular taste, and his verses, 
wedded to simple music, long delighted ears not over-fastidious. 

Born in 1797, Bayly died in 1839, at the comparatively early age 
of forty-two. He is one of the numerous worthies whose names are 
intimately associated with Bath ; for, in addition to his having been 
born there, all, or nearly all, his most popular songs were written in 
that pleasant city. 

Sir John Bowring was better known as Dr. Bowring, LL. D. 
He was knighted in 1853 after having been consul at Hong-Kong, 
and was subsequently the Queen's representative in China. He was 
some time editor of the Westminster Review, an advanced Liberal, 
and member of Parliament, first for Kilmarnock, afterward for Bol- 
ton, and literary executor of Bentham. 

He was a native of Devonshire, of a very old family in that 
county, and was born at Exeter in 1798. It was that fact perhaps 
that brought us into harmony, for I was not at any time an admirer 
of his politics — those of " The Philosophical Radicals," as his school 
was styled — or styled themselves, taking James Mill as their idol. 

As an author, his reputation mainly rests on translations from 
languages with which few persons are acquainted, but his public 
services were considerable ; as an advanced Liberal he largely aided 
his party, and was foremost as a promoter and advocate of many good 
and useful measures in Parliament ; while as a man and a gentle- 
man he was in all ways beyond reproach. He is one whom his 
native county may be proud to rank among the worthies of Devon. 

John Britton, F. S. A. — I prefer to give my memory of this 
eminent antiquary — the pioneer of more recent archaeologists — as of 
an extract from the Art Journal. I wrote thus nearly forty years 
ago: 

" It is in contemplation by some personal friends of Mr. Britton, in con- 
junction with others who are cognizant of his services, to ' testify by some 
public acknowledgment the debt due to him from all who are interested in our 
ancient architectural glories.' To this testimonial we shall very gladly con- 
tribute. Few men have been more useful in their generation. Mr. Britton 
was a brave and zealous preserver of our national antiquities, when the duty 



JOHN CLARE. 409 

was neither so simple nor so creditable as it has since become. Architecture 
and archaeology owe him much — he has worked long and ardently for both : 
a veteran in the cause of Art, he retires from the contest only when the vic- 
tory has become certain and easy. His experience extends, we imagine, over 
half a century : fifty years of hard work have, we trust, secured him sufficient 
to make the down-hill of life a facile descent ; and the object contemplated is 
only some unequivocal sign that his amiable qualities, his kindly disposition, 
and his ready zeal to communicate information have their just influence upon 
a very large circle of friends ; while those who know him only through his 
numerous works — every one of which has been more or less beneficial to his 
country — will be equally willing to aid in adopting some mode of recording 
their sense of his services. Such episodes in a life of labor are not only salu- 
tary rewards ; they act as direct encouragement to honorable exertions, and 
are stimulants to useful energies. In this country ' the public ' does that 
which governments do — wisely and honestly — elsewhere." 

Ebenezer Elliott. — I can not pass in memory through Shef- 
field without taking note of the Anti-Corn-Law Rhymer, whose dis- 
mal, yet grand and patriotic poems, I do not doubt, aided largely to 
bring about the repeal of the Corn Laws, when Cobden and Bright 
were assailing them from many platforms. It was Bulwer Lytton, 
prompted by William Howitt, who brought the dawn of fame to 
Ebenezer Elliott. Howitt sent to Bulwer a coarsely-printed pam- 
phlet-poem, entitled " Ranter," and Bulwer sent a review of it to me, 
as editor of the New Monthly Magazine. 

No man could be more happy than Elliott in a green lane ; 
though an indefatigable and successful man of business, he devoutly 
and devotedly loved Nature. If absolutely rabid when he wrote of 
the " tax-fed aristocracy " — sententious, bitter, sarcastic, loud with 
his pen in his hand and class sympathies and antipathies for his 
inspiration — all evil thoughts evaporated when communing in the 
woods and fields with the God by whom the woods and fields were 
made ; among them his spirit was as fresh and gentle as the dew by 
which they were nourished. I saw him but once, yet I had much 
pleasant correspondence with him ; and in the " Amulet " some of 
the sweetest and best of his poems were printed. He was also a 
frequent contributor to the New Monthly Magazine. 

John Clare was, far more truly than Ebenezer Elliott, of the 
class of uneducated poets. I recall him, poor fellow, with his huge, 
overburdening head, that might have dreamed dreams and seen 
visions, but obviously was not the throne of productive thought. 
His life was cheerless, or gladdened only by a brief ray of sunshine 
that speedily gave way to blacker and blacker clouds of calamity, 
under the gloomy influence of which his mind sank : and after long 
years of confinement he died in the Insane Asylum at Northampton, 
the town with which his name is inseparably associated — though not 
to its honor. He was not buried in a pauper's grave ; a few pounds 



4 io AMELIA OP IE. 

were kindly subscribed to preserve his body from that indignity ; 
that, and a small annuity purchased for him by subscription, while 
he was yet free from the most terrible of maladies, is the sum of 
what his country did for the poor peasant-boy who lived through 
penury and suffering to leave his mark in the literary annals of his 
time. I knew him in 1826 or 1827, and printed in the " Amulet" 
some of the best of his poems, notably, " Mary Lee." At a later 
period a memoir of him in the " Book of Gems," with some exam- 
ples of his genius and a reference to the sad story of his life,* 
brought me a letter from the noble Marquis who took his title from 
Clare's native town ; but I never heard that it resulted in substantial 
aid to the poor poet. Yet he had been guilty of no other crime than 
poverty, and his errors were only those that are unhappily so fre- 
quently found in combination with the highest order of genius. 
London society, certain coteries of it, at least, made a lion of him 
for a time, and then consigned him to utter and withering neglect ; 
what had been sport to the lionizers was death to poor Clare, whom 
flattery and patronage had disgusted with his former life of hopeless 
poverty, and who found himself suddenly plunged back into it. 

Amelia Opie. — I have described Mrs. Opie as "at home" in 
the gay capital of France. 

" At one moment," as Mrs. Hall wrote, " discussing some point 
of natural history with Baron Cuvier ; the next, talking over the 
affairs of America with Fenimore Cooper ; the next, explaining in 
very good English-French to some sentimental girl who craved her 
blessing, and called her mire, that she never was and never would 
be a nun, and that her dress was not the garb of any such laborious, 
useful, or self-denying order as the Sceurs de Charite". Mrs. Opie 
was, to perfection, the elderly English lady, tinged with the softest 
blue, and vivified by the graceful influence of Parisian society." 

Twenty years later, I saw Mrs. Opie for the last time — only a 
brief while before her death. It was in the autumn of 1851, at her 
quiet, pleasant dwelling in the Castle Meadow of Norwich ; and not 

* John Clare, the peasant-poet. — It is well known that this amiable man 
and highly distinguished poet, has been for some years subject to such aberration 
of mind as rendered it necessary that he should be removed from his family, and 
placed in a situation where the best medical treatment and most judicious means 
of management could be engaged in contributing to his recovery. He has now 
been under the care of Dr. Allen, of Fairmead House, Epping Forest, for nearly 
four years ; and it is with much pleasure that all the friends of humanity and ad- 
mirers of genius will hear that, in Dr. Allen's opinion, Clare's recovery would soon 
be complete, if his anxiety for the welfare of his family could be relieved by the 
consciousness that he had an income more adequate to their support." — Extract 
from an advertisement in the Art Union, 1845. 

The hopes referred to in the above unhappily proved transitory, and the luck- 
less poet was consigned to the public asylum at Northampton — to be liberated only 
by death. 



AMELIA OPIE. 



411 



long after its mistress had paid her last visit to London, to see the 
Great Exhibition of that year. She greeted me with a cordial wel- 
come. Time had touched her lightly, and had not robbed her of 
her grace, but had only replaced the charms of youth with the 
beauty of old age. At eighty-four she was a charming picture of 
what goodness of heart and cheerfulness of disposition can do to 
make age lovely to the last. 

Although a member of the Society of Friends, and bound by 
that connection to be sedate, a leaven of gayety clung to her through 
life, innocently and harmlessly, and there need have been no self- 
reproach in her occasional murmur to herself : " Shall I ever cease 
to enjoy the pleasures of the world ? I fear not." 

In truth she never did. And so her Diary oddly mingles gayeties 
with gravities : May meetings with brilliant evenings, labors of love 
and works of charity with half-idolatrous hero-worship ; and there 
occur records of worldly joys, over which an elder among the 
Friends might shake his head and sigh, side by side with such pas- 
sages as these : " Went to the jail, have hopes of one woman. . . . 
Called to see that poor, wretched girl at the workhouse ; mean to get 
the prayer-book I gave her out of pawn." 

She was earnestly and sincerely philanthropic, though her name 
seldom appeared in the list of subscribers to public charities — for it 
was her way to give, not letting her left hand know what her right 
hand did. 

Feminine — essentially feminine — in her gifts, her graces, her 
strength, her weakness, a true, and therefore a lovable woman, was 
Amelia Opie. 

In 1882 I had the great pleasure to meet at Plymouth a grand- 
nephew of the painter Opie. 

Mr. Opie submitted to me a number of letters from Amelia Opie, 
several of them dated not long after she became a widow. They 
made it clear to me that she had been the devoted and loving wife 
of a devoted and loving husband. Such was by no means the opin- 
ion I had previously held ; writing a memory of her, barely ten 
years ago, I had recorded a very opposite belief, describing Opie 
as a coarse man, unworthily mated to a charming woman. I rejoice 
to do justice to his memory. She loved and honored him. He 
was, I am sure, worthy to be loved and honored. It will suffice that 
I quote a passage or two from one of her letters. He died in 1807. 
In a preface to his life — published in 1809 — she wrote of her "dear 
and ever-lamented husband," of her " affectionate duty to his mem- 
ory." 

" ' If I ever valued the power of writing, it is now that I am enabled to do 
him justice. . . .While I write I shall feel as if he was not entirely lost to me.' " 

" ' I swear to you that nearly every day of my life (a blank, indeed, to 
what it was) I go through fits of anguish and regret, for him I have lost, as 
violent, if not more so, than I have ever felt. He who reads the heart knows 



412 



BERNARD BARTON. 



how often I cry to Him for mercy in the bitterness of my soul and frenzy for 
resignation to His will. My father came in this moment, and seeing me cry- 
ing, asked what was the matter ; as if any new sorrow was necessary to 
make me cry.' " 

Bernard Barton, the poet, was also a Quaker ; but he was to 
the manner born, and formality sat better on him than it did on 
Amelia Opie, who certainly never got, perhaps never tried to get, 
the world out of her heart. 

Bernard Barton, if a poet, was also a banker's clerk. Dissatisfied 
with his lot in life, he sought the counsel of successful authors con- 
cerning a project he had formed of abandoning the desk, and trust- 
ing for bread to the progeny of his pen. Byron, to whom he referred 
his plan, reminded him of the common lot of those whose sole de- 
pendence is literature : 

" Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail." 

And Charles Lamb, after quoting his own experience to show that 
" desks were not deadly," went on : " Throw yourself on the world 
without any rational plan of support, but what the chance employ 
of booksellers would afford you ! ! ! Throw yourself rather from 
the steep Tarpeian rock — slap-dash headlong upon iron spikes. . . . 
Oh, you know not — may you never know ! — the miseries of subsist- 
ing by authorship." 

Barton was wise enough to listen to the warning ; and continued 
forty years longer at the desk he had dreamed of quitting — happier 
than if literature had become the serious business of his life. 

I recall him as he walked the streets of London on his visits 
there, in a broad-brimmed hat and coat of Quakerish cut : a tall 
man, with a complexion telling less of the counting-house than of 
walks among the fields and lanes that environ Woodbridge in quiet 
Suffolk. His simple poetry has for its theme, domestic virtues, and 
homely joys ; and its characteristics are rather feeling and fancy 
than imagination. A letter he wrote to me in 1845 well illustrates 
his character. It accompanied a little volume entitled " Household 
Verses " ; and I find in it these words : 

" I am a lover of the quiet household virtues — can breathe most freely in 
that purer atmosphere in which they live, move, and have their being ; and 
have felt restrained, not less by my taste than by my religious creed, from 
seeking to gain popularity by the use of those exciting stimulants so much in 
vogue of later years with the followers of the Muses." 

A Christian poet, who loved and studied the works of God — 
such is the briefest and best description of Bernard Barton. 

James Montgomery. — If the latest earthly hope of Leigh Hunt 
was that he might meet his earth-friends " in one of Plato's vast 
cycles of re-existence," it was far otherwise with the Christian poet, 
James Montgomery. Yet he seemed perpetually burdened with 



GRACE AGUILAR. 413 

that curse — the weight of which Hunt never felt — mental depression 
such as haunted the poet Cowper from boyhood to the grave. I 
knew him in London, where, however, he never was a dweller ; and 
saw him once seated in his editorial chair at Sheffield. He was 
usually in ill health ; and as I think, judging by the much I heard 
and the little I saw, seldom cheerful, yet always (paradoxical as it 
may seem) happy ; but he looked beyond this life, and had the con- 
solation of faith, trust, and hope. Like Leigh Hunt, he suffered 
fine and imprisonment for libel ; but the offense in Montgomery's 
case was far less grave : indeed, we should be astonished now to find 
it pronounced an offense at all. But when he conducted the Shef- 
field Iris, a libel was a thing easy to fall into ; and so perilous was it 
for journalists to speak out that the " liberty of the press " was prac- 
tically a myth. 

Montgomery, though usually classed among Scottish poets, was 
an Irishman. His father, mother, and all his family were Irish ; and 
in the North of Ireland he was reared and educated, although born 
at Irvine, in Ayrshire, where his father had for a brief while the 
charge of a small congregation. Father and son were Christians of 
the sect of the Moravian Brethren. But Ireland, Scotland, Wales, 
and England may be proud of a man who did so much that was 
good and so little that was bad ; in whose long life, indeed, we find 
nothing that was not designed, and calculated, to advance the tem- 
poral and spiritual welfare of humanity. He is one of the Band of 
Immortal Poets, who, while they confer honor on their country are 
foremost among missionaries sent to do the work of God for man. 

In 1830, James Montgomery came to London to deliver lectures 
on English literature at the Royal Institution. It was then that he 
visited us in Sloane Street. 

Few poets ever suffered more severely at the hands of critics ; 
and, acting on a naturally sensitive nature, the attacks of Jeffrey in 
the Edinburgh, and of lesser Zoiluses in other reviews, probably had 
the effect they were designed to produce. In a letter I received 
from him in 1837, Montgomery thus alludes to himself : "The dis- 
appointment of my premature poetical hopes brought a blight with 
it, from which my mind has never recovered. For many years, I 
was as mute as a molting bird ; and when the power of song re- 
turned, it was without the energy, self-confidence, and freedom 
which happier minstrels among my contemporaries manifested." 

Grace Aguilar. — A pure, good, and greatly gifted woman — 
Christian in all but creed — left earth when the Jewish maiden died. 
Her nation owes her much : her people have, I believe, raised a mon- 
ument to her memory in the burial-ground at Frankfort, where she 
died in 1847, just thirty years old. Her books have done a great 
deal to remove the prejudice that succeeded persecution by which 
the Jews were for centuries oppressed ; and if she did not live to see 



414 



ROBERT MONTGOMERY. 



them on a platform of perfect equality with Christians in England, 
she foresaw the great act of policy and justice that removed all their 
disqualifications : and I can not doubt aided largely to achieve the 
triumph. We knew her personally and loved her — and she loved 
us. She was a "woman of Israel," truthful, upright, charitable, just 
and true. We echo the sentiment we read many years ago on her 
monument : " Let her own works praise her in the gates." 

Robert Montgomery. — While at Bath, I wrote this memory, 
recalling also others who have given fame to the renowned city of 
King Bladud's founding, where his baths continue to be healing 
sources in the most beautiful and graceful of all the assemblages of 
houses in the British Dominions. 

So long ago as 1826, I knew the Rev. Robert Montgomery, the 
author of many poems, especially " The Omnipresence of the Deity " 
that attained a popularity which for some years threw into the shade 
the poetry of his namesake James — a far greater poet, of a far loftier 
nature. Robert was, I have reason to believe, the son of a cele- 
brated clown, Gomery, who had dropped the aristocratic syllable, 
Mont. The son of right reassumed it, and Robert Montgomery has 
a place among British poets of the century. 

In 1826 I had a visit from him ; he had written a poetical satire, 
" The Age Reviewed," and his object was to consult me as to its 
publication. It consisted of a series of assaults on all the leading 
poets and critics of the time : a David assailing a hundred Goli- 
aths without knowing how to use his sling. His rhymes were, no 
doubt, clever — that was the most that could be said of them, except 
that they were just such as inevitably made a mortal foe of every 
one he attacked. When he had read the production to me, I gave 
him earnest counsel at once to put his poem into the fire beside which 
we were sitting. My advice was angrily rejected, and " The Age Re- 
viewed " saw the light in due course. It was a wanton act of ag- 
gression that, before long, no one had reason to lament more bitterly 
than its author. 

But the portrait I draw of him can not and ought not to be all 
shade. Beyond his vanity, there was no harm in him ; nay, his nature 
was generous and kindly. Many years subsequent to 1826, we were 
brought together again, in consequence of our mutual interest in the 
Brompton Hospital for the Cure of Consumption — a charity for 
which he exerted himself ardently and zealously. I will leave this 
pleasanter side of his nature to be described in some words of Mrs. 
Hall, written subsequently to his death : 

" We knew that the desire of his heart was to do good, and that one in- 
stitution (the Hospital for the Cure of Consumption at Brompton) has had its 
fund increased more than a thousand pounds by the earnestness and fre- 
quency of his sermons ; and we mourned for his ' departure ' as a public 
bereavement, even on that ground alone ; though that was but one of his 
many ' outlets ' of Christian charity and love. 



REV. ROBERT HALL. 475 

" Gifted by nature with great good temper and unflagging cheerfulness, 
he had endured the rebuffs formerly heaped upon him without evincing bit- 
terness or disappointment, and determined, nothing daunted, to ' try again.' 

"The Reverend Robert Montgomery was born in Bath in July, 1807, his 
boyish days were passed at Dr. Arnot's school — near his birthplace, and in 
1843 he made a most happy marriage with Rachel, the youngest daughter of 
A. McKenzie, Esq., of Bursledon, Hampshire. Robert Montgomery died at 
Brighton at the end of November, 1855. Had his lot been cast in England 
instead of Scotland (where for some years his sermons filled one of the prin- 
cipal Episcopalian churches in Glasgow), he would not have died only the 
minister of Percy Chapel. 

" The poor, in every sense of the word, were very near his heart ; by his 
preaching and collecting for them he was enabled (we speak having authority 
from one who knew him well) to distribute a thousand a year in charity, and 
this when the net income of Percy Chapel hardly yielded him four hundred a 
year. 

" The world knew him as a poet ; his congregation as a faithful, eloquent 
gospel minister ; the poor as an unfailing friend ; but in his home, no more 
tender or unselfish husband, father, or relative ever left a hearth desolate ! 
' Restless as was his nature, he could tame it down at any time to watch by 
the couch of sickness, or relieve the pangs of sorrow.' " 

Rev. Robert Hall. — So long ago as 1828, I knew the renowned 
Baptist minister, the Rev. Robert Hall. I heard him preach at Bris- 
tol, and more than once visited him there. Though he lived to be 
an old man — born in 1764, and dying in 1831 — he was a sad sufferer 
all his life, from some internal ailment, and his eloquent sermons 
were often delivered while the speaker was struggling with bodily 
anguish. 

In 1799 he preached and published his famous sermon on " Mod- 
ern Infidelity," concerning which Bishop Porteous recorded his "ap- 
plause, veneration, and gratitude," as due to the acute detector, 
perspicuous impugner, and victorious antagonist of the skeptical, in- 
fidel, and anti-Christian sophist." No doubt it contributed much, at 
that perilous period, to arrest the progress of the atheistical principles 
that were then making way in England — blighting emanations from 
diseased Republican France. 

It would be a great boon to society to republish it now ; for per- 
haps no pen has so ably encountered — to vanquish — the twin demons 
of " democracy and atheism." I think I never heard a pulpit orator 
so effective as Robert Hall ; yet his eloquence flowed without effort, 
and was totally devoid of ostentation. He impressed on all who 
heard him the conviction that he spoke for his Master and not for 
himself. 

Rev. Adam Clarke, the distinguished Biblical commentator, 
whom I knew in Cork so far back as the year 181 9, was of another 
type of physique. He conveyed little idea of a man who labored by 
lamp-light ; but rather that of one whose work was done, at all sea- 
sons, in the open air. In the pulpit he had only the eloquence that 



41 6 REV. ADAM CLARKE. 

proceeds from perseverance and convincing zeal. It is something to 
have known a man who was the associate and friend as well as one 
of the chosen missionaries of John Wesley. Dr. Clarke loved much 
to speak of his knowledge of that great man, who, in 1782, had laid 
his hand on the head of the young neophyte, and dedicated him to 
the ministry : and when the subject of this brief notice died, his 
mortal remains were interred in the burial-ground of the Methodists 
in the City Road, close beside those of the Gamaliel at whose feet 
he had sat. 

In those days the Wesleyan Methodists considered simplicity in 
all things the outward and visible sign of inward and spiritual grace ; 
and would have shrunk as much from wearing, at worship, a flower 
or a feather in the bonnet as from appearing in theatrical gauze and 
spangles in the street at mid-day ; moreover, their " houses of God " 
were plain even to rudeness, rigidly destitute of aught that could 
tempt to the sin of adoring the creature. Now they are not unfre- 
quently unsatisfactory imitations of a cathedral ; the organ pours its 
full diapason over the pew in which are ladies who are patterns — not 
of the grave simplicity of the primitive Methodists, but of whatever 
absurdity of dress may be the fashion of the hour. I heard not long 
ago in a Wesleyan " church " one of the most eloquent speakers and 
powerful preachers it has ever been my lot to hear, whose every sen- 
tence seemed to have been written and rewritten, considered and re- 
vised, again and again — so perfect was it in construction and com- 
position : yet the Rev. Morley Punshon was, in the strictest sense, 
an extempore preacher. He called back to memory some of the 
able and gifted men I had heard more than half a century ago ; men 
who appeared as thoroughly inspired as were the Apostles, who did 
the Master's work because they loved to do it, and sought to plant 
the seed only that they might see the harvest. I was, moreover, re- 
minded of the Methodism of my young days ; the preacher was en- 
tirely free from canonicals, and appeared in the plain dress of every- 
day wear. 

I can not tell if vital religion has gained or lost by the concessions 
to the world to which I have referred ; more cheerfulness there may 
be, in the stead of unseemly dolor, when offering the heart to God, 
and many may be led, who must of old have been driven, to salva- 
tion : but possibly the aspirations of the soul are less heavenward in 
presence of so much of the world's pomps and vanities, than they 
would be in an atmosphere of greater simplicity. 

Gerald Griffin, the author of " The Collegians " — that remark- 
able novel, on which the play of The Colleen Bawn is founded — lies 
in the little burying-ground at Shandon Hill, Cork, within sound of 

" The bells of Shandon 
That sound so grand on 
The pleasant waters of the river Lee." 



GERALD GRIFFIN. 



417 



He died just as he was about to leave the world for a religious life, 
and his broken spirit passed away from earth, instead of taking refuge 
in the monastery he contemplated entering. " Lie lightly on him, 
earth " — on the dust of one who found the struggle for fame so bit- 
ter that he resigned it in very weariness of heart when victory was 
well-nigh within his grasp. 

I knew Griffin when I was like him — a young man toiling hard 
for a future. John Banim — who had, between sickness, disappoint- 
ment, and poverty, something like the lot of a literary martyr to en- 
dure himself — was his useful adviser and steadfast friend ; and at 
Banim's house I met him more than once. He was then a delicate, 
or, rather, a refined-looking young man, tall and handsome, but with 
mournful eyes, and that unmistakable something which prognosti- 
cates a sad life and an early death. 

He had come to London at the age of nineteen, with some poems 
in his pocket and an unfinished tragedy. For a long time he con- 
tinued to pick up a precarious living by literature, struggling with 
absolute poverty, without friends, without prospects — almost without 
hope. Sickened by numberless disappointments, brought face to 
face with actual starvation — for it had come to that, when a friend 
once discovered him, and ascertained that he had been three days 
without food — his pride yet held him back from seeking the aid that 
relatives he had left in Limerick would certainly have tendered, could 
he have prevailed on himself to make known to them his extremity 
of distress. Banim — himself hardly in better circumstances — prof- 
fered help, and it was rejected. At last — too late — " The Collegians " 
and " The Munster Festivals " found their way into print, and to 
success ; then their author's dreary path was lighted up with the first 
dawning of fame. Too late — for, though the struggle was at an end, 
it had crushed him. He determined to burn his manuscripts and 
write no more, but withdraw himself from the world. Alas ! even 
while he was preparing for long years of penance and prayer, Death 
came and removed him to heaven. 

I saw him for the last time in Cork in 1840, shortly before his 
death. He was then preparing to take orders as a priest, and had 
joined the " Society of Christian Brothers " (he was " brother Jo- 
seph " there), an Order that, " besides fulfilling all the pious exercises 
of the monastic state, devotes its best energies to the religious and 
moral instruction of the children of the poor." In this new voca- 
tion he might have been useful, but the oil in the lamp had run 
too low — the wasted flame soon afterward flickered out. He died in 
1840.* 

Walsh. — There are three persons, renowned Irishmen, who have 
conferred honor on the name of Walsh. First, Dr. Edward Walsh, 

* Macready, after the death of Griffin, brought out at Covent Garden his tragedy 
of Gisippus, with entire success. 

27 



4 i 8 WALSH. 

Physician to the Forces ; secondly, his brother, the Rev. Robert 
Walsh, Chaplain to the Embassies in Constantinople and Brazil ; and 
thirdly, his son, John Edward Walsh, some time Master of the Rolls 
in Ireland. They were of our dear and long-loved friends. To one 
of the sons of the latter I am godfather. 

Dr. Edward Walsh was a native of Waterford, of a family of 
early English settlers. Having served as an army surgeon during 
the Irish Rebellion — and his memory was vivid as to the incidents 
and terrors of that time — he accompanied the troops to Holland, 
and subsequently published an account of the ill-fated Walcheren 
Expedition. He saw service in many countries of Europe, and was 
in Russia when the Emperor Paul was assassinated. While quar- 
tered in Canada he made the acquaintance of Thomas Moore, and 
was with him in the boat in which Moore penned the lines : 

" Row brothers, row, the stream runs fast, 
The rapids are near, and the daylight's past." 

His military career terminated with the battle of Waterloo, and 
the latter days of his life were passed in tranquil happiness in his 
own country up to 1832, when he died. How much I regret having 
made no notes of his anecdotes and conversation ! He was a most 
kindly, generous, and thoroughly upright man — of the best school of 
Irish gentlemen. 

If Edward Walsh was distinguished, his brother Robert was even 
more so. He became early known in Letters by a large work, which 
he did not originate, but continued — a history of Dublin. He was 
chaplain to Lord Strangford while the " melodious " peer, whose 
poetry is now quite forgotten, was embassador at Constantinople and 
in Brazil, and published two valuable books relative to the Porte and 
the Brazilian Empire — books that must have been of great value to 
subsequent travelers. He was at Constantinople when the memo- 
rable slaughter of the Mamelukes took place, and describes the mas- 
sacre in his " Records of a Residence " there, with all the terrible 
minuteness of an eye-witness. Dr. Walsh closed a long life of useful 
work in comparative quiet as Rector of Finglas, near Dublin — hon- 
ored and beloved. I knew him intimately so far back as 1826, soon 
after his return from the East. I have known few with whom inter- 
course was in all ways so profitable. His only son, John Edward, 
was our dear friend. As an author, the work of John Edward 
Walsh was chiefly limited to contributions to the Dublin University 
Magazine, for which he wrote the series of papers " Ireland Sixty 
Years Ago," subsequently collected and issued in a volume that has 
obtained high repute and large circulation. He held office as Attor- 
ney-General for Ireland from July to October, 1866. I heard him 
make his maiden speech in Parliament as representative of Dublin 
University. He was afterward Master of the Rolls, and had he 
lived would have been Lord Chancellor of Ireland ; for he was not 



LONGFELLOW. 4 ! 9 

only a sound and able lawyer, but a most accomplished gentleman 
and most estimable and upright man, respected and honored by men 
of all creeds, and of all political opinions. 

Thus four generations of the family of Walsh have been our 
friends. The son of the Master of the Rolls is the Rector of Mala- 
hide, and another son (my godson) a barrister, and I have lived to 
see their children. Their fathers, "gone before," were of high in- 
tellectual power, and of the purest moral, social, and religious integ- 
rity. So may their successors be ! The great-grandchildren of Dr. 
Robert Walsh have a lofty, unstained, and honored name to transmit 
to their posterity. 

Longfellow. — So much has been written and published during 
the past year concerning Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and I could 
add to it so little of value, that I prefer to say very little indeed. 
Ample justice has been rendered to his memory, not only in his own 
country, but in this — wherever, indeed, the Anglo-Saxon tongue is 
spoken or read. I give him very high rank among the poets of the 
century, placing him, perhaps, next to Wordsworth ; while of the 
modern poets — those of to-day — assuredly he is as a Triton among 
the Minnows. I except only Tennyson ; but the Poet Laureate 
must not be named with the poets of to-day. His place is with his 
contemporaries, Byron, Wordsworth, Shelley, Moore, Southey, Camp- 
bell, Coleridge, and other " giants." * 

I not only honored Longfellow as a poet, I loved him as a man. 
I did not see much of him when he was in London ; he was my 
guest but twice. The evenings I refer to are of my most cherished 
memories, that nothing but death will remove from me — nay, death 
can not do that evil work, f 

" There is no death : what seems so is transition ; 
This life of mortal breath 
Is but a suburb of the life Elysian, 
Whose portal we call Death ! " 

* So far back as 1838, it was my high privilege to include Tennyson in " The 
Book of Gems of British Poets and British Artists." For that brief biography, Leigh 
Hunt gave me some excellent remarks, which I introduced into my memoir — fore- 
telling the future fame of him who has since established it. Of the fifty poets, speci- 
mens of whom are given in that book, only two now live — Alfred Tennyson and 
Mary Howitt. 

f I have elsewhere recorded that I presented to Longfellow the inkstand of the 
poet Coleridge, given to me by Mrs. Gillman. Several years afterward, as I have 
also recorded, I presented to him Crabbe's inkstand, which had become the ink- 
stand of Thomas Moore. In acknowledgment, I received the following letter ; it 
is dated December 7, 1881, barely three months before his death — March 24, 1882. 

" Cambridge, December 7, 1881. 

" Dear Mr. Hall : I have this morning had the pleasure of receiving your 
letter of the 21st November. 

" On my return from my summer rambles, I found the beautiful oaken casket, 
containing the bronze inkstand of Crabbe, safely deposited in my study. 



420 



FFXI.\fORE COOPER— /El IVTHORXE. 



In addition to Longfellow, I have had the happiness to number 
among my acquaintance various distinguished Transatlantic men 
and women of letters — notably Nathaniel Hawthorne, Washington 
Irving, Fenimore Cooper, Mrs. Sigourney, and N. P. Willis. 

1 met COOPER often during my residence at Faris in 1S31. I 
have referred to him elsewhere. He seemed to me the beau-tdial — 
let the term be translated at will — of an American citizen, and gave 
me, more than any other man I have ever seen, the idea of a Puritan 
of our own Commonwealth days, with a bearing that might perhaps 
be termed stern, and certainly was not cordial : a firm step, a mas- 
sive head and figure, and commanding look. He was not a man to 
whom one would readibly apply the adjective " lovable " ; but he 
seemed eminently calculated to extort respect, or even — if circum- 
stances should make it his object to do so — to inspire fear. 

Hawthorne was his very opposite. That most lovable of 
writers was also — to those who knew him intimatel) — one of the 
most lovable of men. My acquaintance with him was slight ; but it 
has left on my mind a vivid impression of his painful shyness in 
general society, and the retiring — nay, morbid delicacy — with which 
he shrank from notice, instead of courting, or rather commanding, 
it, as was the manner of his brother-novelist.* 

" How shall T sufficiently thank you, dear Mr. Hall, for these precious relics, 
and for the kind and generous feeling which prompted your sending them to me? 
1 can only do so by telling you how highly I value them, and with what care 1 shall 
keep them. 

" I should have written sooner to say this, but immediately on my return home 
I had an attack of nervous prostration, from which 1 have not yet fully recovered . 
as you see by my not writing with my own hand. Recovery is a slow process. 

" I rejoice to see, by the firmness of your handwriting and by your own assur- 
ance that your health is so good. 

" I am looking forward with eager interest to your ' Recollections of a Long 
Life.' 

" Believe me always, dear Mr. Hall, 

" Yours faithfully and sincerely, 

" Henry W. Longfellow." 

I need not say I joined " heart and soul " in the movement that will result in 
placing a bust of Longfellow in Westminster Abbey ; he has been a great teacher in 
England and all its dependencies, as much so as in the United States — extending the 
power and influence of the Anglo-Saxon tongue, that will be — perhaps, ere another 
generation has come and gone — spoken and read by the half ot humankind. 
1 ongfellow is no more the poet of America than he is of Great Britain. The record 
that preserves his memory in the venerable abbey will give delight here as well as 
there : for he is the pride of the millions here as he is the glory of the millions 
there. The sentiment that accords honor of Longfellow is as universal in the one 
country as it is in the other. 

* I once sat next to Hawthorne at a lord mayor's dinner. He was then the 
United States Consul at Liverpool, and knew that his name was included in the 
list oi' toasts. The prospect gave him, what it is no exaggeration to call, intense 
agony. His hands shook, his lips quivered. I said to him : " Now, if you attend 
to me, you may be safe from all apprehension ; and be sure to make a good speech. 
When you hear your name, and I take the glass in my hand and drink the toast. 



IR VING— WILLIS— MRS. SIGO URNE V. 



421 



Washington Irving, when I knew him, was past the zenith both 
of his life and his fame. He was inclined to rest and be thankful, 
to wear placidly the crown of bays that his intellectual activity had 
woven for hiin in earlier years ; and so I found him, as others had 
found him, sleepy in a double sense — physically and mentally. 

N. P. WILLIS was introduced to me by Lady Jilessington, with a 
view to his contributing to the New Monthly ; and in the result, sev- 
eral of his most spirited prose sketches were published in that maga- 
zine. He had then but newly arrived in London after a lengthened 
tour in the East, and was not long in making his way into the best 
English circles ; his person being in his favor and his manners essen- 
tially those of a gentleman, though somewhat overlaid with what was 
then called "dandyism." Willis had seen much, read much, and 
was a keen observer of men and manners. 

I may add to these brief tributes of remembrance one concern- 
ing that most estimable lady and writer, Mrs. SlGOURNEY. Our 
personal acquaintance with her was short ; but we maintained with 
her a frequent correspondence extending over many years. She was 
a mild, sweet, and gentle woman, of an essentially feminine nature, 
and gifted with a high order of mind. Those who knew her well 
bear testimony to her many noble and lovable qualities. She has 
left works that the young especially may study with great profit ; for 
the writer trod faithfully in the steps of those teachers who inculcate 
much that is right and nothing that is wrong. 

The list of authors I have known is not exhausted : but my space 
is. I must resist the temptation to treat at greater length a very 
seductive theme. 

look only at me : do not turn your eyes toward the lord mayor, or on any of the 
magnates. Consider you are thanking only me for the honor done you." Jfe acted 
on the suggestion : saw me alone : and as I nodded approval of every sentence he 
uttered, bowed to me in acknowledgment, seeing and consequently acknowlei 
my nods and compliments, of " Yes, yes," and "Good, good." And so he made 
an excellent speech — which certainly he would not have done had he not accepted 
and acted on my advice. I give that advice to all nervous speakers at public 
meetings. 



RECOLLECTIONS 
OF ARTISTS I HAVE KNOWN. 

It is unnecessary for me to say that all the artists of the earlier 
half of the century have been my personal acquaintances ; I have 
known them all, and it seems to me that I might write something of 
each that could not fail to interest a reader. But exigencies of space 
demand that my memories must be comparatively few — those only 
of professional Leaders. I commence with "the greatest, yet the 
meanest " of them all. 

J. M. W. Turner, R. A. — Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, in the 
latter half of the last century, numbered among its unpretentious 
dwellings the abode of a barber in no very fashionable way of busi- 
ness. The lane is a narrow, crowded way, through which carriages 
can not pass. At that period, the neighborhood was a dense laby- 
rinth of courts and alleys, from St. Martin's Lane to Covent Garden. 
Here was crowded together an abundant population ; each of the 
stories, or even rooms, of the houses held separate families ; it was 
therefore a fitting locality for a busy hairdresser. His name was 
Turner, and his parti-colored pole hung beside the archway leading 
into Hand Court ; the house is a small one, with only one window 
in front ; it is now added as a storehouse to adjoining premises, but 
is unaltered in its general features. Here the painter was born in 
the year 1775 : he was christened in the adjoining church of St. 
Paul's, Covent Garden.* 

Millions have admired his works, but none loved, the great land- 
scape-painter. Perhaps a meaner soul was never linked to so lofty a 
genius. His was not a happy life ; far from it. He seems to have 
had no measure of enjoyment except art, unless he obtained it from 
nature — physical nature, that is to say, for he could see no inner 
beauty in other of God's many beautiful works. He amassed an 

* Cyrus Redding, in his " Forty Years' Recollections," states that Turner told 
him — when Redding was enumerating the number of artists to whom Devonshire 
had given birth — " You may add my name to the list : I am a native of Devon- 
shire." 



TURNER. 



423 



enormous fortune * — for heirs to wrangle over, much as curs would 
snarl over a banquet of bones. An ungenial, uncheered, unhopeful 
life, resulted in a discreditable death, amid associations that can be 
only termed loathsome. While living, he never sought to help or 
benefit any of his fellow-creatures, and when he died it was sorely 
against his will that he conferred on others advantages for which he 
was to receive nothing in return. There are not many now who, 
pausing before Turner's masterpieces at the National Gallery, can 
recall the man who created them. A short, thick, stubbed, ungainly 
and ungraceful form, hair gray, straggling over a big head overladen 
with flesh, a keen penetrating eye, a broad but not high brow, de- 
ficient of the organs of benevolence and veneration. Such, those 
who remember Turner, will recall him as they have seen him at the 
private views of the Royal Academy (he was not often seen else- 
where), with gloves that had been thrice cleaned,! and a blue coat 
with brass buttons, creases in which made patent its recent removal 
from the drawer where it had probably been in confinement since 
the private view of the year preceding. It is a miserable character 
I thus describe, and I have pleasure in quitting a theme on which I 
might enlarge greatly. Of a surety I might apply to him the line of 
the poet — 

"The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind " : 

for Turner was essentially selfish — in youth, in manhood, in old age. 

The illness which led to Turner's death required him to seek 
change of air ; but he dreaded expense, and found, by chance, a 
small lodging to let in a little house fronting the Thames near Cre- 
morne Gardens, Chelsea. Retaining his dislike of visitors, he never 
gave his name to the mistress of the house, nor did she know it until 
after his death, which happened there on the 19th of December, 
185 1. One bright winter's day, a short time before he died, the 
painter was carried to the first-floor window to see the sun set — with 
a calm glow over the Thames. 

He was buried in the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral, by the side 
of Sir Joshua Reynolds. 

Prout told me a story, that illustrates his character. Turner, 
Prout, and Varley had been together on a sketching tour in Devon- 
shire. They had to cross a ferry ; Varley had not at the moment a 
sixpence in his pocket, so he borrowed one from Turner. The next 
morning Prout and Varley left Exeter to return to London. Al- 
though the coach started at six o'clock on a very cold morning, to 
their surprise, but greatly to their satisfaction, they saw Turner at 
the coach-office waiting to see them off. " Ah ! " cried Varley, " this 

* It was said by Lord Erskine when told of a person who had died worth 
^200,000, " Well, that's a pretty fair capital to begin life with in the next world ! " 

f I well remember an audible whisper running round the great room at Somer- 
set House : " Do look at Turner, he's got a new pair of gloves ! " 



424 



WILKIE. 



is really very kind of you, Turner, to be up so early to bid us good- 
by ! " " Oh," said Turner, "it isn't that ; but you forgot to pay me 
back the sixpence you borrowed from me yesterday ! " 

I can well believe what Prout told me, that, when traveling to- 
gether on the top of a diligence, Turner sketched, on the back of a 
letter, Heidelberg, the theme of one of his greatest pictures, where 
they arrived late at night to leave it at early morning. It was mate- 
rial enough. 

David Wilkie passed the later years of his life in comparative 
prosperity in a large house in Church Street, Kensington, and ob- 
tained better prices for his pictures than in the days when a peer of 
the realm bought his " Village Politicians " for ^30, and grumbled at 
the exorbitant price. 

My visits to the great painter were pleasant to me, and, I believe, 
also to him. He was purely an artist, indisposed to talk on any sub- 
ject other than art, and, although a Scotchman, his education must 
have been niggardly. Yet he came of an intellectual race, his father 
being a Scottish clergyman, his grandfather the author of poems that 
might be beneficially taken from the grave to which they were long 
ago consigned ; while he himself had not been without advantages 
derived from travel. 

I remember Wilkie asking me to call upon him and see his pict- 
ure of " An Irish Whisky-Still." 1 made sundry objections to his treat- 
ment of a subject entirely unsuited to his handling — since an Irish 
" private still " was a thing he could never have seen. The illegal 
distillery of the picture presented various features that betrayed to 
any one acquainted with the reality the artist's ignorance of this 
theme. One of the rough brewers of the mountain-dew wore red 
breeches ! Another was handing to a friend a " sup of the crathur " 
in a glass (/) instead of the invariable goblet, an egg-shell (often that 
of a goose). Vain was my protest against such incongruities, so 
thoroughly out of place, so utterly opposed to truth. 

I remember a valuable criticism being passed on Wilkie by an old 
Irish servant of ours. She knew nothing of art ; but she knew her 
business — as a house-maid. An engraving of " The Recruit " was 
pinned against a bookcase, that I might study it to write about it. 
In came old Alice, looked at it, exclaimed, " Dirty house-maid ! " 
and retired. I called her back, to ascertain what she meant. In 
the corner of a neat and tidy Scottish cottage had been placed a 
mop, from which water was trickling along the floor. None but a 
dirty house-maid would have placed it there without first wringing it 
out. 

But although these two anecdotes would seem to indicate that 
in his pictures he was careless of exactness in details, it was really 
far otherwise. No painter, as a rule, gave more heed to truth, or 
more closely studied the objects he desired to introduce into a 



EASTLAKE. 425 

picture. Hart tells us that "he had a model for everything he 
did." 

The life of Wilkie was on the whole a happy, and, certainly, an 
honored life. He labored for fame, and won it. His death took 
place on board ship as he was returning from the East, and one of 
the most characteristic of the later pictures of Turner depicts Wil- 
kie's burial at sea. 

Sir Martin Archer Shee, who succeeded Lawrence as Presi- 
dent of the Royal Academy, if not holding the highest rank as a 
portrait-painter, was a most estimable gentleman, of large acquire- 
ments, goodly presence, refined manners, generous, sympathizing, 
good. He died so long ago as 1850 — an Irishman of whom his 
country has a right to be proud. His poems are forgotten, although 
probably he was indebted for fame more to his pen than to his pen- 
cil. It was no light praise that which Byron gave to his " Rhymes 
on Art " : 

" Whose pen and pencil yield an equal grace." 

Shee carries me a very long way back in my art-memories. His 
first picture was exhibited in 1789 ; in 1798 he was elected an Asso- 
ciate of the Royal Academy, and invested with the full honors two 
years after. He survived the thirty-nine members by whom he had 
been elected. 

Sir Charles Locke Eastlake, P. R. A., D. C. L., LL. D., 

F. R. S., etc. — It must be admitted that the high position Sir Charles 
Eastlake obtained in the art history of his country was due far less 
to his talent as a painter than to his knowledge of art — and to the 
general qualifications he possessed for presiding over the academic 
body. His pictures in no single instance show remarkable genius, 
but they are distinguished by great delicacy of feeling, by pure taste, 
and by a pervading grace that rarely fails to win attention, though 
never forcing it. As a colorist they show him to have had no ideas 
in common with the best painters of the English school ; and, though 
he studied in the chief schools of Italy, he acquired none of the 
glowing tints of Titian or Giorgione ; his life-size female heads, how- 
ever, have, in elegance of composition and sweetness of expression, 
some affinity to those of Titian. It may be that the knowledge of 
how much more developed was his ideal of perfection than his power 
to attain to it inspired a humility of character, a distrust of himself, 
that impeded his justification of the choice that made him President 
of the Royal Academy.* 

* I may note, en passant, that Eastlake was of a good and highly respected 
family at Plymouth. Some members of it, much esteemed, still reside in the vicin- 
ity ; and a younger brother is now Keeper of the National Gallery, an office which 
Sir Charles long held. 



426 PROUT. 

He was a thorough gentleman, of calm and refined manners ; so 
over-cautious that he would risk nothing to work out a purpose. If 
he was not greatly loved he was greatly respected ; if with power to 
do much he did little to advance the interests of British art, he, at 
all events, added largely to its literature ; and has educated by his 
pen much more effectually than he did by his pencil. A little more 
of the self-esteem of Haydon would not have ill become him, and 
would surely have made him a greater man than he was. He seemed 
so perpetually afraid of doing wrong that he omitted many opportu- 
nities of doing right. The most commonplace letter he usually pref- 
aced with the word " Private," as if he dreaded the publicity that 
was, after all, the breath of his life. Among the worthiest of Dev- 
onshire worthies let his name be classed, for he was in all ways an 
honor to his native county. 

His person was much in his favor ; he had fine though not ex- 
pressive features, tinged — tainted, I might say — by what, I think, 
was constitutional timidity ; his manners were the very opposite of 
presuming or overbearing ; and if the younger members of his pro- 
fession did not owe him much gratitude, they could bring against 
his memory no well-founded reproach on the score of arrogance or 
harshness.* 

Samuel Prout. — In the autumn of 1882 I visited at Plymouth 
the street in which he was born in 1783. The house itself has been 
pulled down ; in it his father carried on the trade of a bookseller. 
It is fully fifty years ago since I first knew the artist. No member 
of his profession ever lived to be more thoroughly respected — be- 
loved, indeed — by his brother artists ; no man ever gave more un- 
questionable evidence of a gentle and generous spirit, or more truly 
deserved the esteem in which he was so universally held. His always 
delicate health, instead of souring his temper, made him more con- 
siderate and thoughtful of the troubles and trials of others ; ever 
ready to assist the young with the counsels of experience. He was 
a fine example of upright perseverance and indefatigable industry 
combined with suavity of manners, and those endearing attributes 
of character which invariably blend with admiration of the artist 
affection for the man. During the last six or seven years of his life 
I sometimes (not often, for I knew that conversation was frequently 
burdensome to him) found my way into his quiet studio at Camber- 
well, where, like a delicate exotic, requiring the most careful treat- 
ment to retain life in it, he would, to use his own expression, keep 

* One of the most valuable of his pictures is a portrait of the first Napoleon, as 
the deposed Emperor stood on the gangway of the Bellerophon, when the vessel 
destined to convey him to St. Helena was anchored in Plymouth Harbor. The 
artist had seen him thus more than once, and pictures him with singular fidelity. 
Many years afterward I obtained a loan of that picture, and an engraving from it 
is one of the illustrations of the Art Journal. 



MACLISE. 



427 



himself " warm and snug." There he might be seen at his easel 
throwing his rich and beautiful coloring over a sketch of some old 
palace of Venice or time-worn cathedral of Flanders ; and, though 
suffering much from pain and weakness, ever cheerful, ever thankful 
that he had strength sufficient to carry on his work. It was rarely 
that he could begin his labors before the middle of the day, when, 
if tolerably free from pain, he would continue to paint until the 
night was advanced. A finer example of meekness, gentleness, and 
patience I never knew, nor one to whom the epithet of " a sincere 
Christian," in its manifold acceptations, might with greater truth be 
applied. The profession lost in him a member of whom brother 
artists might be proud, and who was in every way worthy of their 
veneration as of their love. He died at his residence at Denmark 
Hill, on the 9th of February, 1852, aged sixty-eight. Notwithstand- 
ing the lingering nature of his illness, death came to him suddenly 
at last, a fit of apoplexy terminating the valuable life of one to 
whom the poet's line has rarely been applied with greater truth and 
force : 

" Death never comes amiss to him prepared." 

Prout was born at Plymouth in 1783, and died, as I have said, in 
1852, at Denmark Hill, where he had been, in the latter years of his 
life, the neighbor as well as the friend of John Ruskin. The great 
writer has done justice to the memory of the great painter, whom he 
honored as an artist and loved as a man. 

Benjamin Robert Haydon. — I have written elsewhere sufficient 
concerning Haydon. His was a sad life with a very sad ending. 
The theme, therefore, is not a pleasant one. I once said to him, 
" Haydon, if you had more pride and less vanity you would be the 
great man you aim to be." The evil of failure must be attributed all 
to himself. Yet let his name be honored without scruple in his 
native county of Devon. The house at Plymouth, in which his 
father was a bookseller and he was born, is no longer there ; but I 
stood on the site not long ago, and removed my hat as a tribute of 
homage to one of the greatest artists and the most remarkable men 
of my time. 

Daniel Maclise, R. A. — In the year 1820 I was living in Cork. 
Entering one day the hall of the Society of Arts, the few models in 
which had been recently augmented by gifts from George IV, I 
noticed a handsome and intelligent-looking boy drawing from one of 
the casts. I entered into conversation with him, examined his copy, 
and remarked, " My little friend, if you work hard and think, you 
will be a great man one of these days." In the year 1828 I again 
encountered him ; then in London, with a portfolio under his arm. 
He was about eighteen years old ; he had become an artist, and was 



4 28 MACLISE. 

drawing portraits for any who would commission them, and at such 
prices as content young men, distrustful of their own papers, and 
who have merely dreamed of fame. 

A rich faculty of invention — combined with great power — marks 
almost every work that proceeded from the hand of Maclise ; yet 
vigor of conception, and a wonderful boldness of handling, were 
united with the utmost attention to detail — even to pre-Raffaelism. 
It is said he was no colorist ; in one sense that may be true, for his 
pictures, although brilliant with color, are often deficient in the har- 
mony that satisfies the eye ; hence a certain harshness far from agree- 
able, and a want of that repose which, even amid a blaze of splendor, 
is not beyond the reach of the painter's art. Vigor of composition 
and force of realization seem to have been the aim of the painter, 
and in working to these ends he appears to have cared little for 
aught else ; but whether his canvas showed only a single figure or 
was crowded with stirring incident, it manifested the mind and hand 
of a master. 

I could say much, from long experience, of the genial nature, the 
high mind and generous heart of Maclise, but I could not say it half 
so well as it was said by his friend Charles Dickens at one of the 
annual dinners of the Royal Academy : 

" Of his genius in his chosen art I will venture to say nothing here, but of 
his prodigious fertility of mind and wonderful wealth of intellect I may con- 
fidently assert that they would have made him if he had been so minded, at 
least as great a writer as he was a painter. The gentlest and most modest of 
men, the freest as to his generous appreciation of young aspirants, and the 
frankest and largest hearted as to his peers, incapable of a sordid or ignoble 
thought, gallantly sustaining the true dignity of his vocation, without one 
grain of self-assertion, wholesomely natural at the last as at the first, ' in wit 
a man, in simplicity a child,' no artist of whatsoever denomination, I make 
bold to say, ever went to his rest leaving a golden memory more pure from 
dross, or having devoted himself with a truer chivalry to the art-goddess he 
worshiped." 

A more eloquent tribute to the memory of man was never uttered. 
I can indorse every word of it. That is nearly all I need say of one 
I honored and regarded with sentiments of respect and affection. 

Between the years 1830 and 1838 there appeared in Fraser's 
Magazine, written by Maginn, a series of biographical sketches^ ac- 
companying portraits of living celebrities from the facile pencil of 
Maclise. The series consisted of eighty-three portraits, character- 
istic and capital as likenesses. They were collected into a volume 
and published, with all the original letterpress, in 1873 by Chatto 
and Windus, the successors of John Camden Hotten, who had 
communicated with me on the subject, and had asked my advice. 
They were fortunate in obtaining the co-operation of Mr. William 
Bates, B. A., Professor of Classics in Queen's College, Birmingham, 
by whom the book is edited. He has done his part (and a large part 



MULREADY. 



429 



it is), not only with great industry and painstaking research, but in 
a spirit of kindliness, generosity, and sound judgment. As a record 
of so many heroes and heroines of the pen, of the past generation, 
the book is invaluable. How many of the eighty-three are now liv- 
ing ? Living, that is to say, on earth, for nearly all of them live in 
their works, and can never die ! Not one ! I knew Maclise inti- 
mately when he was making these sketches ; there was an affectation 
of secrecy about the procedure, and certainly few or none of the 
" sitters " sat for a portrait ; they were all done from memory, pos- 
sibly aided by a few stolen memoranda ; but he had a wonderful 
faculty for " catching " a likeness — a keenness of eye from which, it 
is said, the phrenologist Spurzheim augured his after-success in art. 
Indeed, the first impression he made was by an outline likeness of 
Sir Walter Scott, whom he had seen for a few minutes in a book- 
seller's shop in Cork, while the Great Magician was with Maria Edge- 
worth in that city, en route to Killarney. It was lithographed, and 
brought the embryo artist repute and what he then needed — money. 
In 1829 he made the drawing of Mrs. S. C. Hall, engraved by 
Lumb Stocks, R. A., published with this book. It was, I think, in the 
following year, 1830, that Segur, then Keeper of the National Gallery, 
and one of the Committee of the Gallery in Pall Mall, called upon 
me to inquire if I knew anything of a young Irish artist, whom he 
named Maccles. I soon corrected him. Segur told me the directors 
had been astonished at the marvelous merit of a picture, " Mokanna 
raising the Veil," from " Lalla Rookh." Thenceforward his rise was 
rapid and sure ; and, although he died when hardly beyond his 
prime, he has left to the world a vast amount of art treasure, evi- 
dencing not only genius, but indefatigable industry. 

Mulready. — I have said elsewhere that my recollections go back 
to a time when British Art had little encouragement, and British Art- 
ists few " Patrons." Houses held at moderate rents were then inhab- 
ited by even our best-known painters, the freehold of which might 
be purchased by the sum that a single one of their pictures would 
fetch now. Mulready's house, in Linden Grove, he rented at per- 
haps sixty pounds a year, and did not find it easy to pay that ; he, 
however, gave lessons in painting, and so obtained a sufficient in- 
come. 

I recall Mulready in his prime as a tall, handsome man. He died 
very aged, in 1865. His first picture, exhibited at the Royal Acad- 
emy, dates so far back as the year 1806. Full of years and honors 
he departed — enjoying all his faculties and much of his power to the 
last ; for his most recent productions may be pronounced marvels of 
Art. A very few days before his death, I saw him in apparent vigor 
after a walk of two or three miles ; and that same evening he passed 
in social enjoyment at the house of his friend E. M. Ward, R. A. 
Even on the evening immediately preceding his death, he was, it has 



430 



ELMORE. 



been stated, in the life school of the Academy at work with the stu- 
dents. The obituary announcement in the Times mentioned his age 
as seventy-eight, but he must have been older, for I have elsewhere 
stated he showed me a small picture of a gravel-pit, and said he had 
painted it on the site of Russell Square. That could not have been 
long after the year 1800.* 

He was born at Ennis, in the County Clare, Ireland, where his 
father carried on the business of a breeches-maker — a lucrative trade 
at that time, when almost every man who owned a horse of any kind 
'sported the buckskin." 

In person, Mulready was tall, manly in form, and even in his old 
age presented an appearance scarcely less vigorous and handsome 
than it had been in his prime of manhood. His features were finely 
cut, his eye bright and clear to the last, his mouth severe but by no 
means sensual ; his face had, when circumstances called it forth, a 
sarcastic expression, and his frown, as I have sometimes seen it, was 
positively terrible. Though unhappy in his domestic relations, he 
was generally beloved by those who knew him intimately, and espe- 
cially by the younger members of the profession, to whom he was 
ever ready to tender serviceable advice. 

Alfred Elmore. — In the year 1815 I chanced to be at Clona- 
kilty, in the county of Cork. A friend of my father's, Dr. Elmore, 
who had resided there, was the surgeon to a regiment with which he 
was then serving abroad. He had taken part in the battle of Water- 
loo, -and on that memorable day a son was born to him far away in 
that small Irish town. Dr. Elmore was not an Irishman, but his wife 
was an Irish lady. Naturally I paid my respects to her on visiting 
Clonakilty ; and, of course, the infant " hope of the family " was ex- 
hibited to me. 

Some twelve years afterward, Dr. Elmore was settled in London, 
and became our family doctor. One day he consulted me as to what 
he should do with his eldest son, who wanted to be an artist, while 
the father destined him for his own profession. He showed me some 
sketches, early efforts of the lad. I was startled by their merit and 
promise, and said, "You will try in vain to prevent Alfred from being 
anything but an artist, and you ought to shrink from so doing, if you 
could." I have reason to think that opinion greatly influenced the des- 
tiny of the painter, who ultimately took foremost rank in his profession. 
He died on the 24th of January, 1881, leaving one child, a daughter, 
to whom he bequeathed a large fortune (mainly, if not entirely, the 
produce of his pictures), no part of which, I regret to say, was shared 
by his brethren in art — such of them as are in distress — or by any 

* A picture of a similar subject was exhibited at the Academy in 1848 : it was 
called in the catalogue " A Gravel-Pit, painted in 1807 or 1808," but that was a 
different work. 



JOHN LINNELL. 431 

one of the many benevolent institutions which he could have helped 
so easily by a small offering of his wealth. For example, the Artists' 
General Benevolent Institution, an admirable society that has for 
many years brought gladness to many suffering hearts and needy 
homes — but the income of which has always been sadly restricted — 
might well have figured in the will of a prosperous artist. 

I grieve to make this note of one I had known in infancy, and in 
watching whose career I received much gratification — from his hon- 
orable progress in achieving fame and fortune. 

Dr. Elmore had over his chimney-piece a small painting of the 
Crucifixion, by Vandyke, presented to him by one of his patients ; it 
is a work of wonderful power. I have no doubt that to that grand 
picture young Elmore was largely indebted for his early attraction to 
Art, and for much of his subsequent greatness in his profession. 

John Linnell I visited in 1850, at his house in Porchester Ter- 
race, Bayswater. His large painting-room was hung with his pict- 
ures : there were no buyers. He complained to me — it is not disre- 
spectful to his memory to say — in a justifiable wail — that nobody 
bought a picture of his painting ; and I verily believe if at that 
time he had received an offer of a thousand pounds for the whole 
" lot " that was scattered around him, that offer he would have ac- 
cepted. " I can not," he said to me, " live by my profession. I have 
tried portrait-painting, and can not get a commission." (I remember 
a wonderful small portrait of Mulready, and another of, I think, Col- 
lins, were hanging in the room.) " I have tried engraving, but with 
no result " (there are some etchings of his in the hands of collectors : 
I have one) ; and he wound up by repeating more than once the mel- 
ancholy complaint, " Nobody will buy a picture of mine ! " It touched 
me as it would have touched any hearer. A few months afterward 
he exhibited two pictures at " The British Institution," in Pall Mall ; 
one, " The Storm," was hung on the screen, which, many will remem- 
ber, usually contained gems. Mr. Vernon was living two doors off. 
He was in bed, the bed he never afterward left. I went to him and 
said : " Sir, there is a picture at the Institution which I wish you 
would let me buy for you. It is a work of great merit, by John Lin- 
nell." He said, " You know I can not see it ! " " No," I answered, 
" but you may take my judgment ; its price is but forty guineas." 
He directed me to purchase it, and I did so. He also bought, by my 
advice, for one hundred guineas, the picture of the " Wood-Cutters " : 
both are now among the priceless gems of the Vernon Gallery. The 
sale to Mr. Vernon of these paintings was soon known ; and from 
that day Mr. Linnell had no moan to make concerning lack of pur- 
chasers : he sold his pictures as fast as he could produce them, and 
has been known to produce in a fortnight a work that he sold for 
a thousand guineas. He died possessed of very large wealth ; yet 
wealth of which he made little use to obtain happiness for himself or 



432 W. J. MULLER. 

others. I regret to add another passage to this somewhat singular 
story. A few years ago, at a private view of the Royal Academy, I 
was conversing with him on the topic of the Vernon purchase. We 
were in accord in the matter, except that he said it was fifty, and not 
forty, guineas that Mr. Vernon had paid him for " The Storm." But 
I am quite sure it was priced forty guineas when I bought it. He 
said : " Mr. Hall, I have never given away a sketch ; for when one 
gives away sketches, there is no end to it. But I must make an ex- 
ception in your favor ; come and see me at Reigate." A few months 
later I responded to the invitation. In his studio I saw a large num- 
ber of sketches, and audibly admired two or three of them ; taking 
care not to admire such as were of size and seemed commercially 
valuable ; but I left his house without the promised sketch. He 
could not find it in his heart to give. 

I will not apologize for the introduction of this anecdote. No 
doubt the change that was taking place as regarded national esti- 
mates of British artists must soon have brought ample " custom " to 
the atelier of John Linnell — one among the chiefs of the profession ; 
it would not have come to him so soon as it did, but for the accident 
of my visit to Porchester Terrace, followed by my subsequent visit 
to Mr. Vernon. 

John Linnell died in 1882. He had been born in 1792, and was con- 
sequently a very aged man : but he painted up to the last ; although 
his later works are, by comparison, little more than washed out copies 
of his earlier productions. His first picture was exhibited in 1807. 

He died a wealthy man ; but his wealth was all obtained by the 
sale of his works after the year 1850, when I saw him first. He was 
not a charitable man. I know of no institution, artistic or other- 
wise, that was the better because he had lived. He grudged himself 
reasonable and rational enjoyments ; and if not an absolute miser, 
did not understand the line — 

"More blessed 'tis to give than to receive." 

W. J. Muller. — He was a man in whom genius was associated 
with modesty, independence with courtesy, and generosity with pru- 
dence ; his highly educated mind and refined sentiments never un- 
fitted him for mingling with the rough and rugged, where was to be 
found the recommendation of talent or character ; his naturally 
sound and upright principles had been strengthened by practiced 
judgment ; he, in every way, ranked foremost among those whose 
destiny it is to exhibit the advantage to the individual himself and 
to the world of blending high intellect with moral and social virtues. 

Midler's primary instructions in Art were received from J. B. 
Pyne ; but he soon quitted other instructors for that great guide, 
Nature, and in the years 1833 and 1834 made a tour through Ger- 
many, Switzerland, and Italy, returning to Bristol and pursuing his 



w. J. mUller. 433 

profession (but with only partial success) in that city. Some inter- 
esting letters furnished to the Art Union by Miiller during his jour- 
neyings, supply evidence of his great ability as a thinker and writer, 
as well as an artist. 

I have alluded to the treatment he received at the hands of the 
Royal Academy in 1845. It caused the illness from which he died ; 
the shock was so great that it affected his heart — from disease of 
which he had previously suffered. 

Indignation is a weak word to express the feeling of Miiller's 
friends when they saw that the whole of his noble contributions were 
placed so as to induce a belief that there existed a conspiracy to 
ruin him. Accident might have led to the injurious hanging of one, 
or even two ; but when they saw six of his pictures * hung either 
close to the ceiling or along the floor, it was difficult to arrive at any 
other conclusion than that there was a deliberate design to crush and 
destroy a man of genius. Deliberate or not, the effects on Miiller 
were mortal, and I do not hesitate to say that the Royal Academy 
as certainly killed William Miiller as if they had stabbed him to the 
heart with a more material weapon. The bar thus sought to be 
placed in the path of his professional advancement produced results 
that could scarcely have entered into the imaginations of those who 
set it up. 

Miiller lived in lodgings — in the Charlotte Street that neighbors 
Oxford Street — and so moderate were the prices paid him for his 
works that he never but once in his life received for a picture so 
large a sum as ^100. I knew him when he was a lad in Bristol (his 
father was Curator of the Institution in that city), and he then 
made a drawing for me. I knew him afterward intimately, and loved 
him much ; a truer gentleman never lived — perfect in his art, yet 
as modest and unassuming as man could be. I was by when he sold 
for ;£8o his picture of the " Chess-Players." I saw it not long ago on 
the walls of Mr. Bolckow, and that gentleman had paid for it more 
than four thousand guineas. 

Miiller also wrote for me some valuable letters, which I published 
in the Art Union. They were sent to me during his travels in the 
East — where he had gone in company with the Government expedi- 
tion to Lycia, but entirely at his own expense. He died in the Sep- 
tember following that mournful 1st of May. A month before his 
death he wrote to me : "I have," he said, " much reliance on medi- 
cal aid ; I place my reliance on it next to the Almighty, and then, 
fully believing it to be under His loving aid, I leave the issue in His 
hands." I rejoice to make this record of my friend ; a purer spirit 
never passed from earth to heaven ; his nature was unsullied by a 
single blot ; it was entirely felicitous for good ; he left us nothing 
to regret concerning him but his loss. 

* I have seen one of these very pictures sold at Christie's for nearly ,£2,000. 

28 



434 JOHN MARTIN. 

John Martin. — Between the years 1825 and 1835 the painter 
John Martin, then residing at Alsop Terrace, Marylebone, gave 
weekly parties, at which many men of celebrity, and others who were 
commencing lives that afterward became celebrated, were guests.* 
The artist was a small and delicately formed man, with gentle yet 
handsome features, and bland and courteous manners. His gather- 
ings are remembered with gratitude by the few who still live to re- 
call them. I am one of the few who acknowledge the debt. One 
evening, when I was present, there came to Martin's house a young 
man who greatly amused the party by making a doll dance upon a 
grand piano, and excited a laugh when he said, " You will be sur- 
prised if I tell you that is done by lightning ! " It was Mr. Charles 
Wheatstone, then a music-publisher in Conduit Street, afterward Sir 
Charles Wheatstone, F. R. S. In that doll, perhaps, the first sugges- 
tion of the electric telegraph lay hidden — the germ of an invention 
by which every day the British people learn what was doing yester- 
day in every part of the world, a discovery that has belted the globe 
with an electric zone of a thousandfold more marvelous character 
than that which Puck promised Oberon to put about the earth in 
forty minutes. f 

Among the most constant of Martin's guests was Allan Cunning- 
ham, and always with him his admirable wife. 

I remember Martin, Cunningham, and myself chatting over early 
experiences, more especially our struggles to attain positions of in- 
dependence, as the reward of labor : such struggles as most men go 
through en route to distinction. In the course of our talk, Martin 
told the following story of himself : " I had a shilling, and it was 
needful to take care of it ; but getting very hungry I went into 
a baker's shop to buy a penny loaf. To my horror, my shilling 
proved to be a bad one. So, for a long time afterward, when I had 
a shilling, I took care to get it changed into penny-pieces as soon as 
possible, that I might not have another disappointment." 

Martin " scraped " in mezzo-tinto the major part of the many 
engraved plates he produced. He was always at work. Sometimes 

* The social intercourse of artists with men of letters is now carried on at the 
clubs. Unhappily there has been no successor to John Martin in bringing them 
together for mutual pleasure and mutual instruction. 

\ I heard Faraday say at a lecture at the London Institution, " If you were to 
place a wire three times round the globe and touch it at one end, you would receive 
a response at the other, while I can do that ! " — waving his hand with a motion that 
occupied two seconds. 

I more than once, in after-times, reminded Wheatstone of the circumstance to 
which I have alluded ; and urged him to consider — that indulgence to those who 
held beliefs to which he was decidedly hostile was a lesson inculcated by his own 
experience. For the wildest flight of imagination could not, on the night of that 
gathering at Martin's, have grasped the idea of its being made possible to send a 
message to New York while at dinner, and to receive an answer before the cloth 
was removed. 



HART. 



435 



he had before him a bare idea of the design to be engraved ; he 
composed it as he worked. It was certainly so in the case of his 
illustrations to Milton. It is folly to deny to him the attributes of 
high genius ; yet they were, and perhaps still are, denied. He was 
cried down as a quack in art, and never had a chance of admission 
into the Royal Academy. Yet he who has a fine copy of the " Bel- 
shazzar's Feast " has an art treasure that may be classed among the 
choicest productions of the century and the school. 

I met once, at Martin's, his brother Jonathan — the maniac who 
set fire to York Cathedral. It would not have been hard to fancy 
that John possessed the genius that to madness nearly is allied. 

Solomon Alex Hart, of the race of the ancient people, was 
born at Plymouth in 1806. When I knew him, about 1830, he was 
living with his father in Gerrard Street, Soho, and had already 
achieved some fame. He was cheered by selling a picture for twelve 
guineas, but soon afterward received ^70 from Mr. Vernon for a 
picture now in the Vernon Gallery : that led to success. The strug- 
gle had been so hard that at one time he often wanted a loaf of 
bread ; but his life as a whole was fairly prosperous, and we may 
account him one of the lights the Jews have given to a modern 
world. 

Hart left some reminiscences of his contemporaries, and a brief 
memoir of himself. They are printed in a neat volume by his friend 
Mr. Alexander Brodie ; they are of little value, yet interesting as 
records of an "eye-witness." Hart was a scholar as well as a paint- 
er, and might have gathered together and handed to successors a 
vast amount of useful information. It is to be lamented he neglected 
that duty — imperative on one who was for some time Librarian to 
the Royal Academy. 

Not long ago I had the gratification so see in the Town Hall at 
Plymouth the best of Hart's pictures, a work of large size, and of 
merit so great as to rank it among the very best productions of the 
English school — " The Execution of Lady Jane Grey," presented by 
the artist, in 1879, to his native town, is an art-treasure of which the 
citizens may well be proud. Unfortunately he persisted in exhibit- 
ing at the Royal Academy (which, as a member, he had the right to 
do) pictures painted in his decadence — so sadly bad that when spec- 
tators read the letters R. A. after his name, they marveled how they 
came there. None will so wonder who see this masterpiece. It may 
place Hart beside Opie, Briggs, Brockedon, Eastlake, and Haydon 
— also Devonshire worthies — and justify his claim to rank high 
among the foremost artists of the nineteenth century. 

Edward Mathew Ward, R. A., born at Belgrave Place, Pim- 
lico, in 181 6, was the son of a gentleman who held a responsible and 
lucrative post in the banking-house of Messrs. Coutts. Ward en- 



436 E. M. WARD. 

tered upon his professional course under more than ordinary advan- 
tages ; he had Chantrey and Wilkie to encourage him ; the latter 
stood sponsor for him when admitted as a probationer to the schools 
of the Royal Academy, whose walls were in after-years so brilliantly 
ornamented with the results of his genius, skill, artistic knowledge, 
and patient industry. It has been too much the fashion of late 
years among some art-critics and assumed art-patrons to decry the 
school of painting of which Ward was so distinguished a disciple ; 
but so long as the public can have access to such pictures as the 
" Last Sleep of Argyle," " The Execution of Montrose," " The South- 
Sea Bubble," " The Disgrace of Clarendon," " The Family of Louis 
XVI in the Prison of the Temple," " Dr. Johnson perusing the 
Manuscript of ' The Vicar of Wakefield,' " and " Alice Lisle," there 
will be few to deny that his works are such as any nation might be 
proud of. The future will do him more justice than he met with 
from his own generation — classing him among the very foremost 
painters of the century. There is always a consummate knowledge 
of his subject in his compositions, whether taken from English or 
French history. 

Ward was elected Associate of the Royal Academy in 1846, and 
Royal Academician in 1855. He was a man held in great respect, 
independently of his art, by all who knew him ; of a kindly disposi- 
tion, though somewhat rough in manner ; a true and sincere friend, 
and a ready helper where aid was needed. The large troop of artists 
and friends who gathered round his grave in Upton Old Church, on 
that bleak wintry morning of January 21, 1879, testified to his private 
and social worth. 

I do not write at length concerning my long-valued friend Ward. 
The mournful close of his life forbids my doing so. To account for 
that awfully sad event is impossible — otherwise than on the certainty 
of temporary insanity. I am as sure that insanity prompted the fatal 
act, as I am that I write these words. No man was happier in all the 
associations of home : united to a devoted woman, with tastes and 
occupations entirely in harmony with his, who also was respected 
and honored in art, and especially as an art teacher. A faithful 
wife, a tender and careful mother, a true friend ; she had earned the 
affectionate respect of all with whom she came into contact. All 
who knew her loved her, as surely did her husband.* All his chil- 
dren were doing well. In that household there was no extravagance, 
not a shadow of recklessness characterized the hospitality always 
exercised there. Of few men who have ever lived can it be said that 
their past had been less clouded, or that Providence had given them 
a future freer from gloom. At no time of his life had there been any 

* I had seen Henrietta Ward (his namesake, but not a relative) when an infant 
in arms : she is the daughter of G. R. Ward, an artist of eminence who, in early 
life, was a miniature-painter, and the granddaughter of James Ward, R. A., the 
best animal painter of his time. 



STANFIELD. 



437 



struggle with adversity. From his youth upward there had been no 
unpropitious circumstances in his surroundings tending to originate 
mental disease ; and assuredly in the period of his ripe manhood if 
I had been called upon to write a single word that could better than 
another characterize his career, it would have been the word " pros- 
perity." Yet such is the inscrutable mystery of our lives that of a 
mind diseased — suddenly and momentarily diseased, it may be — 
Ward assuredly died. 

A better man in all the relations of life — as son, husband, father, 
friend — I never knew. I think of him often — never without affec- 
tion, and always with respect. 

Clarkson Stanfield. — Some of my readers will remember that 
when Stanfield had reached the highest point of his renown, he 
painted scenery for his friend Macready ; it is a treat even to call to 
mind its marvelous beauty. The last time I saw Stanfield was at a 
private view of the Royal Academy ; he was breaking fast. I recall 
his words as he leaned on my arm while descending the staircase at 
Trafalgar Square. In reply to my observation that we should meet 
there again next year, if we did not meet before, " You will never 
see me here again," he answered. He lived over the next private 
view, but did not attend it, and before the month of May was out, 
he passed away. A good, as well as a great, man, was called from 
earth when he died. 

His father, James Field Stanfield, was an Irishman and a Roman 
Catholic, and had been educated in France for the priesthood of his 
church ; but he never took orders, and in the end went to sea, where 
— strange contrast to his original destination — he was for some time 
employed in the slave-trade, and learned, from what he saw, to loathe 
its horrors. He was afterward associated with Thomas Clarkson 
and Wilberforce in their efforts for the abolition of slavery. After 
the philanthropist, Clarkson, his son, was named. James Field Stan- 
field was a man of ability, cultivated by education, and published 
several works of interest. Clarkson Stanfield had the misfortune to 
lose his mother in 1801, and in the same year his father married 
again. Shortly afterward Clarkson was sent to Edinburgh, where he 
was apprenticed to a herald painter, and in that occupation gained 
much useful knowledge for his after-career, as he had inherited from 
his mother a considerable talent for drawing. 

In 1808, Clarkson went to sea and was employed in the merchant 
service until 18 13, when he entered a king's ship. While on board 
the Namur, he was sent ashore to do a painting for the admiral's 
ball-room, which gave so much satisfaction that Stanfield was prom- 
ised his discharge from the navy. He became an A. R. A. in 1832, 
and an R. A. in 1835. 

The effects of his boyhood afloat are traceable in nearly every 
work that came from his brush. He retained, from those early years, 



438 CRUIKSHANK. 

vivid impressions of the sea, and a love of it that clung to him 
through his whole life. Some of his happiest hours in after-times 
were passed on or near the ocean. His home life, like his public 
life, was a happy one : his genial manners and warm heart endeared 
him to a large circle of friends, numbering among them some of his 
most distinguished contemporaries in art, science, politics, and litera- 
ture. 

He died on the 18th May, 1867, and was buried in the Roman 
Catholic cemetery at Kensal Green, where a handsome marble cross 
is erected to his memory. 

George Cruikshank was born before the nineteenth century 
commenced, and was an art professor almost from his cradle — a boy 
doing the work of a man. Second to none as a humorist, and a 
master in his own department of art, he stands also in the front rank 
of philanthropists. His faithful, earnest, and unselfish labors in the 
great cause of temperance, as opposed to reckless indulgence in the 
terrible vice of drinking, would alone have secured for him a niche 
of honor among the worthies of his generation and his country. His 
claim to loving admiration and remembrance rests not upon a single 
isolated quality, however high its character ; but upon a rare com- 
bination of qualities, all of them great and excellent ; and the man 
joined with the artist to render Cruikshank's claim to the homage of 
posterity indisputable. 

Of his subtle perception of character, of his keen sense of the 
humorous and ridiculous, of the masterly ability with which he im- 
parted a natural air to the grotesque and extravagant, and of the life 
and vigor, and movement of his figures and groups, it would be 
superfluous for me here to speak. That is all known as widely and 
familiarly as his name ; and wherever Art has extended her benign 
influence, there the name of George Cruikshank is happily associated 
with the ever-welcome productions of his delightful and essentially 
instructive pencil — truly a great teacher was my friend George 
Cruikshank. 

Cruikshank's death occurred in 1878. Born in Bloomsbury in 
1792, son of an artist, who was himself skilled in caricature designs, 
the boy at a very early age helped his father in the work of drawing. 
When he was but seven years old he made drawings — which were ex- 
hibited, with a very large number of others of later date, at Exeter 
Hall, in 1863. Cruikshank, during the life of his father, from whom 
he seems to have had very little encouragement — and still less of 
help in the matter of instruction — attempted to get admission into 
the Schools of the Royal Academy when Fuseli was Keeper ; but 
whether he was admitted as a student is a disputed point. The elder 
Cruikshank died while his son was still young, and the latter took up 
and completed some blocks the former had left unfinished ; thence- 
forth his vocation in life was fixed. 



FLAXMAN. 



439 



Two monthly political satires of the day, the Scourge and the 
Meteor, he illustrated with caricatures ; and for the politician and 
publisher, William Hone, he did a considerable amount of work of a 
satirical character reflecting on the government of that time, and 
especially on the subject of the trial of Queen Caroline, the unhappy 
consort of George IV. 

To enumerate even a hundredth part of Cruikshank's labors with 
the pencil would be sufficient to demonstrate not only the versatility 
but the unwearied industry of the artist. In the " Universal Cata- 
logue of Books on Art," published by the Science and Art Depart- 
ment in 1870, we find the name of George Cruikshank associated 
with no fewer than one hundred and seventeen distinct publications 
— the majority having "numerous plates." 

As an oil-painter, Cruikshank exhibited pictures occasionally — 
not till toward the middle of his life — at the Royal Academy, and at 
the British Institution ; but his works of that description attracted 
little attention. His most famous production of this kind is " The 
Worship of Bacchus," a remarkable composition in all ways, of very 
large dimensions, and containing about eight hundred figures, in- 
cluding all classes and conditions. It was painted to aid the Tem- 
perance Movement, as also were the series of designs known as " The 
Bottle " and " The Drunkard's Home " ; the artist being in his later 
years a zealous advocate of " teetotalism," with which his name is 
very closely identified, and in aid of which movement he worked 
diligently in every way whereby he could further the interests of the 
cause. 

Almost to the very day of his death, Cruikshank retained that 
elasticity of spirit, vigor of mind, and comparative activity of body, 
which he had enjoyed through a lifetime extended far beyond the 
allotted term of man's existence. He lived to a good and useful pur- 
pose, and his memory will long be enshrined in the hearts of all who 
knew him, and valued his genius and the good objects to which it 
was so often dedicated. 

I should ill discharge my duty if I omitted to render honor and 
homage to one who has been so prominent and great a benefactor 
to his age and country. 

So much has of late been written concerning " Teetotal George," 
that I may be pardoned for having compressed my sketch of him 
into slender limits. My latest memory of Cruikshank is connected 
with his funeral. I was one of the pall-bearers when his body was 
interred at Kensal Green. He had passed on earth eighty-five years 
of a singularly active life : beginning work, as I have said, almost in 
infancy, and ending it only on his death-bed. 

John Flaxman. — To the leading sculptors of my time I can de- 
vote but a few pages. I saw great Flaxman once at the Royal Acad- 
emy, and once at his house ; a small, delicate man with a lofty fore- 



440 



GIBSON. 



head, in appearance just such as he is pictured by his friend Jack- 
son, who as a portrait-painter almost takes rank with Vandyke ; but 
he was too poor to produce works that demanded time and labor, 
and the productions that gave him such high rank are few. For 
several years Jackson painted portraits that are engraved in early 
numbers of the Evangelical Magazine, usually having one sitting 
only, and producing one portrait in a day — heads that were sel- 
dom favorable examples of nature, and could hardly furnish ma- 
terial to the painter for splendid results in art. More than once 
I have been with him during the hour the sitting occupied, and 
easily comprehended the current of undergrowl with which the 
work was accompanied. Jackson's portrait of Flaxman, I think, 
is the greatest and best of modern portraits. It conveys a perfect 
idea of the almost divine expression of the great artist and good 
man. 

I quote a passage from the inscription in the church of St. Giles's 
" in the Fields," that district of St. Giles's where still exist the rem- 
nants of a rookery that not many years back was a disgrace to the 
metropolis. Here rest the ashes of the great artist, and on his tomb- 
stone it is recorded that beneath lies the body of 

" John Flaxman, 
" Whose mortal life was a preparation for a blessed immortality. His an- 
gelic spirit returned to the Divine Giver on the 7th of December, 1826; in 
the seventy-second year of his age." 

John Gibson. — During many years prior to his death, in 1866, 
Gibson was a resident in Rome, only visiting England occasionally. 
On the occasion of such visits he usually gave an evening to us. 
Throughout his long life he was honored as an artist of the very 
foremost type, and greatly esteemed and regarded as a man. In 
Rome his ateliers were freely opened to students, who might there 
study what he worked on and how he worked. They were, at least, 
as free to the American as they were to the British, and among those 
who availed themselves of the facilities he granted were Miss Hos- 
mer and Miss Foley. Dear Peggy Foley died young, and so an art- 
ist of great ability and an estimable woman was lost to the world, 
not, however, until she had been a grand contributor to the art- 
sculpture of America. Indeed, in more recent times the sculptors 
of the United States have been carrying off the laurels from Europe. 
In the long list of American sculptors I might give would surely 
stand foremost the name of Hiram Powers, whose " Greek Slave " 
(engraved for the Art Journal') has perhaps borne off the palm from 
all modern competitors. I must pass rapidly over the names and 
works of Bailey, Westmacott, Macdowell, and other sculptors of an 
epoch now closed. The best productions of all of them may be 
seen at the Crystal Palace, and if the grand remainder and reminder 
of the fairy building in Hyde Park, in 1851, had only that source of 



BEHNES. 



441 



attraction to recommend it, there would be a debt owing to it for 
good work done. 

William Behnes. — Henry, who took the name of Burlowe, 
avowedly because he would not seek to attract to himself a share of 
the professional honors of his elder brother, but really because already 
there was a tarnish on the name, was in all ways steady, upright, con- 
scientious, just ; and he would certainly have attained distinction, but 
that almost on the threshold of his career that career was suddenly 
stopped by his death, of cholera, at Rome. He is known as Henry 
Behnes Burlowe. 

William Behnes had many commissions, especially for busts, in 
the production of which he greatly excelled. I have his bust of the 
Queen when a child of nine or ten years old. It is a charming 
work, and gives assurance of the goodness, virtue, and lofty mental 
qualities by which the Sovereign has been distinguished during a 
long, auspicious, and prosperous reign. It is the portrait of a good 
child destined to be a good woman. It was given to me by the art- 
ist. The original, from which it is a cast, is, I believe, at Windsor. 
Poor, unhappy William Behnes ! he fell into evil habits early, and, 
after indulging in them so long as to sap the constitution, impair the 
mind, and disease the soul, he became a confirmed drunkard, and 
one night was found literally in the gutter, with threepence in his 
pocket, somewhere close to the Middlesex Hospital, to which he 
was taken, and where a few days afterward he died, January 7, 1864. 
So passed from earth another victim to the pest of drink — another 
sad addition to the long list of men of genius who have outraged 
lofty gifts, and blighted careers that were meant to be, and capable 
of being, useful to all human kind : not indeed by actual suicide, 
but by acts that as surely lead to willful and self-inflicted death as if 
the hand had deliberately sent by a pistol-shot the body to the grave. 

Behnes was generally considered a native of Ireland ; he was 
born in London, about 1794. His father was a Hanoverian, the son 
of a physician, but his mother was an Englishwoman. He might 
have died ripe in honors and laden with riches honorably won. 
Fortune became at last weary of lavishing her bounties on one who 
constantly perverted them ; but had the prodigal even late in life 
made any effort to amend his shortcomings, he might yet have ac- 
quired a competence : as it was, he died in penury. The story of 
the latter part of his career is indeed melancholy. He had begun 
life as a miniature-painter. I have a small drawing by him — a like- 
ness of Mrs. Hall, taken in 181 8. He rose somewhat rapidly to 
fame as a sculptor, to terminate his career in the miserable way I 
have described. 

John Henry Foley, R. A., was born in Dublin on the 24th of 
May, 1818, and died at Hampstead on the 27th of August, 1874. 



442 JOHN HENRY FOLEY. 

At the age of thirteen, he commenced to draw and model in the 
schools of the Royal Dublin Society, where he gained several prizes. 
In 1834 he came to London, and attended the schools of the Royal 
Academy, where he rapidly achieved distinction. When I first knew 
Foley, more than forty years ago, he Was living in one of the streets 
leading out of the Hampstead Road (Robert Street), and in the 
small parlor was his model of Ino and Bacchus, afterward destined 
to become famous : but then nobody had made a bid for it. It was 
ultimately commissioned in marble by the Earl of Ellesmere, and is 
now one of the boasts of the country. 

Foley equaled, if he did not surpass, the best of his contem- 
poraries in every department of the art — in his busts, his monument- 
al bas-reliefs, his groups, his single statues, and especially in his 
equestrian statues. No sculptor living or dead has produced works 
more grand than his Lord Hardinge and Sir James Outram. There 
exists no statue more perfect than that of Oliver Goldsmith, in which 
he had untoward materials to deal with, and which is beyond ques- 
tion such a triumph of genius over difficulties as, I think, is unpar- 
alleled in art. 

Foley was not only a great artist, he was emphatically a good 
man, ever ready to help a struggling brother, and foremost in any 
work of charity. He lived simply and without ostentation, was hap- 
pily married, and was always at home — always in his studio, indeed, 
when in health, and only absent when active labor was impossible. 
For the two or three years preceding his death it was obvious that 
his upright, honorable, and prosperous career was drawing to a close. 
He dated his illness from one fatal day of frost and keen east wind, 
when striving to arrange on its pedestal the statue of the Prince 
Consort in Hyde Park. From the attack that followed he never 
recovered, and it was a grief to his many friends to perceive the 
increasing bodily decay that heralded comparatively early death. 

I recall him as I knew him in the long ago — slight, but well 
formed, the face long and sallow, pensive almost to melancholy ; I 
do not think he was outwardly of what is called a genial nature. 
He was not " robust " either in body or mind ; all his sentiments and 
sensations were graceful ; so in truth were his manners. His leisure 
was " consumed by thought " ; he seemed to me to be at work when 
apparently doing nothing ; he was never idle although his hands 
were at rest. So completely had early neglect been exchanged for 
fame and recognition that when he died he had more " commissions " 
on hand than he could — notwithstanding some very efficient aids — 
have executed during ten years of active and energetic life. Yet he 
died poor ; he must have died poor, for he was perpetually giving 
away — ever liberal in helping others. He was buried in St. Paul's 
Cathedral. It was the period of the year when most people are 
away from London, and the attendance at his funeral was not large. 
A dozen members of the Royal Academy and a few men of letters 



LOUGH. 



443 



only were present, when the earthly form of a great genius was laid 
beside many workers of the past who yet live, as Foley will live, as 
long as brass and marble endure. 

John Graham Lough. — The career of this sculptor, who died 
on the 8th of April, 1876, after a few days' illness, is one of no very 
unusual occurrence in the annals of art. Born at the beginning of 
the century of humble parents, and with little aid in achieving suc- 
cess — beyond his own perseverance, energy, and ability — he raised 
himself to a very honorable position as a sculptor, though he may 
not have quite realized the expectations the painter Haydon formed 
and recorded of his genius. 

In private life no artist has been more largely esteemed and re- 
spected. His personal friends were numerous, including many of 
the most famous men and women of the age in science, art, and let- 
ters. There frequently assembled at his house persons not only high 
in rank, but renowned for intellectual and social worth ; their regard 
for the man was great as was their admiration of his genius as an 
artist. He was estimable in all the relations of life, was essentially, 
in manner as well as in mind, a gentleman. He had the qualities 
that convert acquaintances into personal friends, and few men have 
died more regretted by a very large circle. His widow, a sister of 
the distinguished surgeon, Sir James Paget, survives him ; but he 
leaves no son to inherit his name and honors.* 

There are three sculptors, my personal friends, who have died 
recently — Joseph Durham, A. R. A., Edward Bowring Stephens, 
A. R. A., and Joseph Edwards. Each had well earned the fame he 
had attained ; each has left to us works that will be classed among 
the best productions of the nineteenth century. 

I knew the sculptor Joseph Durham intimately. He takes a 
foremost place among the greater artists of the period. Abundant 
proofs of his poetic taste and fancy may be found in the Art Jour- 
nal, where as many as seven of his works are engraved, while the 
testimonial monument in the South Kensington Horticultural Gar- 
dens must be ranked among the best adornments of the metropolis. 
I saw Durham first at the dwelling of Jenny Lind, in Old Brompton. 
He had asked and obtained permission to make a bust of her. The 
result was a production of considerable merit. It was easy thence 
to prophesy success for the young artist. He found patrons, ob- 
tained commissions, was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy, 
and, after the death of Foley, was advancing to the head of his pro- 
fession, when so recently as 1877 he died — it would be wrong to 

* His widow presented his sketches and unpublished works to his native town 
— Newcastle-on-Tyne ; they weighed many tons. The corporation erected a struct- 
ure in which to " house " and exhibit them. 



444 



OTHER SCULPTORS. 



conceal the fact, he has left no relations to be shamed by recording 
it — another victim to the curse that has consigned so many men of 
genius to graves before they had done half the work they might have 
done. 

The theme is sad to me, as I think it will be to many others of 
his friends, and I will abridge a memory that yields me pain rather 
than pleasure, for I regarded him with much affection. 

Joseph Edwards was altogether different. He was a native of 
South Wales : pure and upright and essentially good in all the rela- 
tions of life — a character amply sustained by the refined delicacy 
and purity of his works, the principal of which were sepulchral. A 
small production of his graces the memorial tablet to Mrs. S. C. 
Hall, in the church at Addlestone. His many friends subscribed to 
erect a monument to his memory at Kensal Green. 

Stephens I knew even better than I knew Edwards. He, too, 
was a man of large worth in private life — a sculptor of the highest 
genius. There are in his native city of Exeter four statues, unsur- 
passed in British art. Devonshire lost one of its truest " worthies " 
when Edward Bowring Stephens died at a comparatively early age, 
but not until he had established high fame. 

If in treating of the authors I have known I had to apologize for 
very many omissions, surely I must do so as regards artists — repeat- 
ing that, although the list is not exhausted, my space is. 



RECOLLECTIONS 
OF SOME ACTORS I HAVE KNOWN. 

My intimacy with actors has been limited ; but I have known 
some whose names are famous, and may devote to recollections of 
them some pages of this book. 

I saw John Kemble act in 1815 ; he sustained with marvelous 
power the character of Coriolanus, and trod the stage with appar- 
ently youthful vigor — " the noblest Roman of them all." The next 
day I waited, for some time, beside his door in Great Russell Street, 
to see him in " his habit as he lived," and was not a little astonished 
and shocked when I saw an old and decrepit man totter out, leaning 
on the arms of two servants to be helped into his carriage. For sev- 
eral years before his death he was a sad sufferer from a complaint 
peculiarly terrible to an actor — asthma. In 181 7, on his retirement 
from the stage, there was heaped on him his full share of honors. 
At a dinner given to him in Freemasons' Hall he listened to the 
stanzas written by Thomas Campbell : 

" Pride of the British stage, 
A long, a last adieu." 

While he yet trod that stage he had reformed it in many ways — 
notably as regarded costume. Until his advent, Greek and Roman 
were usually represented in knee-breeches and flowing wigs. In 
181 7 Mrs. Siddons, for her brother's benefit, played the part of Lady 
Macbeth. If we are to credit Macready, the acting of both sup- 
plied proof of " occupation gone " ; the time had come for repose on 
laurels won. 

Edmund Kean's last appearance was at Covent Garden on the 
25th of March, 1833, as Othello ; he could not go through the part, 
broke down after uttering the words — 

"... forever 
Farewell the tranquil mind," 

and was removed from the boards which he was to tread no more. 
Probably he was intoxicated. He certainly was so, when, a very 



446 EDMUND KEAN. 

few evenings before, I saw him play Lear. I have not forgotten 
the shock sustained by the audience when Kean fell flat on the 
boards, and brought the play to a close — as melancholy as it was 
abrupt. 

He had been, if not the greatest actor on the British stage, cer- 
tainly the greatest favorite of the British public, since the days of 
Garrick. He may, as Macready says, " have been too eager a stu- 
dent of startling effects " ; but he produced them at will ; his insig- 
nificant form, so singularly contrasting with that of Kemble, was lost 
sight of in his terrible " earnestness." I have heard actors say they 
had often felt disposed to run away from the terrible light of Kean's 
coal-black eyes. 

He was comparatively young when laid in his grave in the church- 
yard at Richmond. His public life had not quite reached twenty 
years. In 1814 he first appeared at Drury Lane, and Death called 
him from the boards in 1833. His drawback was that he was great 
only by fits and starts, that he seemed to care only for sudden ef- 
fects, and rarely showed a character as a whole, preferring the noisy 
plaudits of the pit and gallery to the silent but expressive approval 
of the cultivated few. He would do little for a character, seeming 
not to enter into it at all until the opportunity came for making " a 
point," when it would be made with terrific effect, and his reward 
was measured by the extent to which his audience " rose at him." I 
have seen him absolutely frighten a whole circle by a look, and it 
was common enough for him to receive an outburst of enthusiastic 
cheers before he had uttered a word. 

He was not a bad man ; he had generous sympathies, would give 
with a liberal hand ; he was only a drunkard ; but that " only " im- 
plies habits disastrous — duties undischarged, low and debasing asso- 
ciations, reckless occupations, degrading pursuits, always unworthy 
and often infamous companionships, brutalizing even a nature origi- 
nally high and good. 

Alas ! in the prime of manhood he willfully blighted the tree of 
life at its root, and while he was still young the expressive, if not 
handsome, features, even the dark, sparkling, and powerfully elo- 
quent eyes, gave sad indications that he was paying the rigidly-ex- 
acted penalty for indulgence in vice. His frame, once so energetic, 
buoyant, and at times dignified, had become weak and tottering. It 
was lamentable to note, as I did more than once, when conversing 
with him, that he was willfully destroying his physical and intellectual 
powers, and insuring an early as well as a degraded death. No 
doubt he had many warnings — added to his own thorough con- 
viction that he was bringing his triumphant career to a premature 
close. 

The name of Edmund Kean is included in the fearfully long 
list of illustrious men who have been guilty of deliberate suicide 
— wantonly, willfully, and of " malice aforethought," abridging 



MRS. KEELEY. 



447 



lives that might have been extended into old age, honorably and 
usefully.* 

Very different was the character, and very opposite were the 
habits, of his son Charles ; in all ways he was respectable — the word, 
perhaps, describes the actor as well as the man : although in some 
parts he rose very far above mediocrity, and in a few characters 
might have taken rank with his famous father. Charles was estima- 
ble in all the relations of life ; a good husband, father, and friend ; 
married to an admirable wife, who, as an actress, took a professional 
status among the highest. He left but one child, a daughter, who is 
happily married, and still lives. 

I knew Mrs. Keeley before she married the excellent actor of 
that name. She was introduced to us so long ago as 1828 (as she 
still lives she will, I hope, pardon me for recording the date) when, 
as Miss Goward, she was commencing the dramatic career in which 
she afterward achieved such success, attaining and long maintaining 
a well-earned renown. She was introduced to us by a musical com- 
poser, Alexander Roche, who set the songs in Mrs. Hall's play of 
the Groves of Blarney. There has been no actress who identified 
herself more completely with the character she represented ; there 
are some, no doubt, who recollect how thoroughly, in the Maid of 
All Work she looked the part of a ragged, slatternly, dirty, slut. 
Mrs. Keeley did not hesitate to look as well as act the character she 
was impersonating, even when in so doing she sacrificed for a time 
all the personnclle that women hold dear. 

I may ask leave to say a word concerning " Miss P. Horton " — 
Mrs. German Reed — a grandmother now — who has won, or rather 
earned, " golden opinions " in public and in private life — for a time 
approaching half a century. When a young, delicate, and very pretty 
girl she was one of the protecting outworks of Macready's citadel ; 
he may have taught her much ; no doubt he did ; but her dramatic 
genius was inherent. As Ophelia, as Ariel, and especially as the 
Fool in Lear, no acting ever surpassed hers in natural grace and re- 
fined subtlety ; her voice, if not of large compass, was singularly 
melodious ; it was like the warbling of a bird, attuned to perfect and 
comprehensive harmony, so " discoursing " as to " enchant the ear." 
I must certainly rank her among the most exquisitely accomplished 
performers I have ever seen — enchanting at once the eye and the 
ear, while thoroughly satisfying the mind. 

I ask pardon of these two ladies for introducing their names 

* Solomon Hart tells a story that when he was painting a portrait of Kean, the 
actor seemed in a downcast mood; the painter complained. "Sir," murmured 
Kean, " I damned a tragedy last night." He had been drunk, and had forgotten 
the text of the part. 



448 JOHN BRAHAM. 

between those of men who might have been their grandfathers, for 
they are both living — of matronly years now, I suppose I may say ; 
but if women are never old until they cease to be charming, Mrs. 
Keeley and Mrs. German Reed must be reckoned as young as were 
Mary Goward and Priscilla Horton. 

The last time I saw John Braham was at Brussels ; but I knew 
him well when he was residing at the Grange, Brompton, when 
"little Fanny Braham," afterward Countess Waldegrave, was a 
singularly pretty and fascinating child. John Braham was a short, 
" pudgy " man, with unmistakable evidence of his descent from " the 
ancient people " ; his wife was a remarkably handsome woman, 
tall and stately, and presenting the appearance of one who, had 
she been born a duchess, would have borne her ducal coronet right 
well. 

In his old age, Braham committed the fatal error of building 
and becoming the proprietor and manager of a theatre — "the St. 
James's." All his life he had shrunk from speculations of that kind ; 
and when he entered on this he was advanced in years, his energies 
had much decayed, and he required, and might have been expected 
to covet, repose rather than exertion. Yet not long before he took 
the perilous step, when asked, during an examination before a Com- 
mittee of the House of Lords, whether he was the owner of any 
theatre, he emphatically answered, " No, thank God ! " He em- 
barked all his savings in this venture, and, as if that were not enough, 
added to his incumbrance by purchasing the Coliseum in Regent's 
Park ; the inevitable consequence ensued — he lost all he had gained. 
Happily the remainder of his journey was made comparatively easy 
by the sustaining hand of his daughter, who had become wealthy, 
and, though his wife was dead, he had the constant care and com- 
panionship of her sister, so that the down-hill of life was smoothed 
for him into a gentle and easy descent to the grave at Brompton 
Churchyard, where he is buried, and where the remains of his excel- 
lent wife also lie. 

In 1836 Mrs. Braham, with whom the management of her hus- 
band's theatre chiefly rested, applied to Mrs. Hall to write a play. 
At that time an actor, Morris Barnett, had made a great " hit " in a 
piece entitled Monsieur /agues, the chief character in which, sus- 
tained by him with much ability, was that of a Frenchman ; he re- 
quired a new part, and Mrs. Hall wrote, mainly for him, a play — 
The French Refugee. It was a " success," running through the re- 
mainder of the season of ninety nights. One of the parts was 
played by Madam Sala (mother of the eminent author — a very charm- 
ing lady), who sang with much sweetness and skill ; I well remem- 
ber the little boy, who was destined to be a great man, frequently 
accompanying her to the theatre, and once to our house. 

Mrs. Hall wrote for the theatre another play, Mabel's Curse, in 



TYRONE POWER. 



449 



which the actor Harley sustained the leading part. That also was 
successful. 

Mrs. Hall also produced a play at the request of Mr. and Mrs. 
Frederick Yates. I recall the day when the estimable and admirable 
lady brought her boy to see us — the boy who is now one of the men 
of mark of the century. The play was the Groves of Blarney, drama- 
tized from one of her own stories in " Lights and Shadows of Irish 
Life," and the main purpose in writing it was to supply a character 
for the renowned actor, Tyrone Power, subsequently " lost " in the 
President, the ship in which he was returning to England from a pros- 
perous tour in the United States (and, by-the-way, he had with him 
a one-act piece of Mrs. Hall's, of which she neglected to keep a 
copy. It was called, I think, Who's Who ? I can not say if he had 
brought it out in America). 

In the Groves of Blarney, Power sustained three parts — an Irish 
gentleman, an Irish " natural " (half-idiot), and an Irish yeoman — 
for either of which impersonations he was eminently fitted, and all 
of which he sustained with marvelous fidelity. No one within my 
memory has represented an Irishman so well ; there was inimitable 
" oiliness " in his rich brogue, seldom exaggerated, and certainly 
never vulgar. He rather elevated than sunk the stage idea of a 
native of the Green Isle, although preserving the main features of 
the long-accepted stage-type — a conventional creation that was very 
rarely flattering to the country. We saw much of Power during the 
periods of rehearsal ; he carved and cut, struck out and inserted 
sentences, with the despotic freedom of an autocrat : but assuredly 
improved the piece. It ran through a whole season at the Adelphi, 
but died with the actor to whom it owed so much ; at least it has 
never been represented since his death. Power was a somewhat 
short and slight man ; his features were poor, and he was pitted 
with the small-pox ; but there was a singular sparkle in his eye that 
told of latent humor, although off the stage he was as little of an 
actor as could well be imagined. He was quiet of demeanor and 
gentlemanly in manners, and had in no way lent force to the then 
popular notion that an actor could not well live an orderly life nor] 
an Irishman be free from habits of dissipation. He has left with 
those who knew him a very* agreeable memory, although he was by 
no means " a society man." There has been no Irishman to succeed 
him on the stage, in the characters he made thoroughly his own.* 

* I copy the following from Webb's " Cyclopaedia of Irish Biography " : 
" Tyrone Power, an eminent actor, born about 1795, according to one account 
in the county of Waterford, according to another at Swansea, of Irish parents. 
His real name was Thomas Powell. He served his time as a compositor, but ulti- 
mately abandoned printing and went on the stage, where he soon obtained a high 
position. After some experience in tragedy he took up Irish comedy, to suit which 
he " manufactured " an admirable brogue. In 1818 he retired from the boards, 
29 



450 CHARLES MATHEWS. 

I call to memory Charles Mathews, the elder, and his inimitable 
" At Homes " ; compared to which those of modern times are as a 
basin of skimmed milk to a dish of clotted cream. In private life, 
Mathews was full of wit and fun, and rich, racy humor. I met him 
often in divers places. As an actor he had great and original merit. 
But it was in monologues that he surpassed all competitors. Yates 
attempted to follow him, and was but a diluted copy. The rapidity 
and dexterity with which he effected changes in dress were marvel- 
ous ; seldom leaving the stage ; for he could slip under a table, 
sometimes talking all the while, and rise the next instant a new man 
— going down perhaps a corpulent Welshman, and rising up a sleek 
" Monsieur." He was not only perfection in lively comedy — now a 
clown, now an elderly beau, and presently an antiquated spinster. 
He was as wonderful in pathos as in humor. Who of those who 
have seen it can have forgotten his picture of " Monsieur Malet," an 
aged French emigr/, in some town of America, who haunts the post- 
office in the vain hope of finding there a letter from his daughter ? 
" Any lettere from my chere daughter to-day ? Any letter for Mon- 
sieur Malet ? " being regularly answered by the postmaster with " No, 
there ain't no letter for Muster Malley," on which the disappointed 
sire complains : " Day after day, I come, no letter. Ze child forget 
her old fazere ! " 

But when suddenly the poor exile sees one in the window, di- 
rected to him in his daughter's well-known hand, the change from 
deep despondency to frantic rage was marvelous, as he seizes the 
postmaster by the throat and exclaims : " Dere is a letter for Mon- 
sieur Malet ; scelerat, you lie ! " " That," says the postmaster, " that's 
been here a month ; it ain't for Muster Malley, it's for Mr. Ma/*?/." 

In these " At Homes " Mathews sometimes sang with great effect, 
in addition to representing seven or eight different, and very va- 
ried, characters in an evening — each to perfection. Irish, Scotch, 
French, Welsh, American, no nationality came amiss to him, and in 
each he seemed a genuine son of the soil. His followers of to-day 
would hide their diminished heads if they could form anything like 
a correct idea of what their great predecessor was. Whether he 
chose to convulse his audience with laughter, or move them to tears, 
he was alike unrivaled. 

but returned in 1821 and became manager of the Olympic Theatre in 1823. He 
appeared at Drury Lane in the same year. In 1824 he achieved a triumph as Pad- 
dy O'Halloran, and thenceforward devoted himself to Irish character. Mr. Power 
traveled in America in 1833-35, an d published his Impressions of America in 
1836. In 1840 he made a second tour in the States, and sailed from New York on 
his return in the steamship President on March II, 1841. Nothing was ever heard 
of the ill-fated vessel, and it was supposed to have foundered in a storm or come 
in collision with floating ice. Mr. Power was the author of some novels. An in- 
teresting note of his last appearance in Dublin, June 20, 1840, will be found in 
Notes and Queries, Second Series. His son, Sir W. Tyrone Power, has written 
several books of travel." 



FREDERICK YATES. 45 1 

Mathews was not a mimic ; he was a great imitator ; the best, 
perhaps, that has ever lived. Julian Young remarks on his " quick- 
ness of observation, flexibility of voice, mobility of feature, and sup- 
pleness of muscle," and tells us that often, when dining with the 
Duke of Richmond, his Grace would drink his health, not as Mr. 
Mathews, but as Mr. Sheridan, Lord Erskine, Mr. Curran — as the 
case might be ; and was invariably responded to in a speech, after 
the manner of the person indicated, so as to electrify the hearers. 
Coleridge said of him, " You call him a mimic, I define him as a 
comic poet acting his own poems." * A satirist, his arrows were only 
aimed at vice ; a taker-off of peculiarities, he never sought to make a 
mock of deformity. In short, nothing can be written of his theatri- 
cal career that would not be to his honor. Add, again, that he was 
estimable in every relation of private life. Julian Young bears 
hearty testimony to the intrinsic worth of his character, his untar- 
nished integrity, his love for his wife (by whom a biography of her 
husband was written), and for his son, his fidelity to his friends, and 
other admirable traits. 

Of the younger Mathews I knew little. He was what is under- 
stood by the term " a loose fish " ; a key to his character is furnished 
by the anecdote told of his preferring to hire a fly to traveling in an 
omnibus, and assigning as his reason that he could not afford to 
journey in the latter — they always wanted ready money. He must, 
however, have had qualities that endeared him to many ; for he had 
troops of friends, and was popular both on and off the stage. 

Frederick Yates, the sometime associate of Mathews, I knew 
long and somewhat intimately, and also his estimable and admirable 
wife. Mrs. Yates was one of the many women who have conferred 
honor on the profession ; an excellent actress she was ; in parts that 
demanded delicacy and pathos, she did not fall far short of being 
great. Yates was a pleasant, agreeable, and lively "society man,"f 

* Caroline Fox relates of the elder Mathews : " When very near death, he drank 
by mistake for his medicine, a bottle of ink ; the doctor, when told, exclaimed, 
* Why, it is enough to kill him ! ' ' No, no,' answered the dying man, ' I'd only to 
swallow a sheet of blotting-paper.' " 

f I remember Yates telling me an anecdote of himself that I may here reproduce. 
A Welsh clergyman, who had been attentive and hospitable to Mr. and Mrs. Yates 
during one of their provincial tours, had promised to visit them whenever he came 
to London, and before long duly kept his word. Of course he received an invita- 
tion to dinner and to the theatre afterward. It happened, however, that Yates had 
quite forgotten his name ; so had his wife when appealed to on the subject ; and 
their visitor had left no card. Mathews, who was to be of the dinner-party, was 
made acquainted with the dilemma, and during dinner led the way to a discussion 
on the various modes in which people spelt their names ; then, suddenly turning to 
the great unnamed, " By-the-by," said Charles, " how do you spell yours, sir ? " 
" Oh," said the other, " I spell it with two p's." Mathews and Yates looked at 
each other, and no further attempt to solve the riddle was made. But to Yates's 



452 MISS O'NEILL. 

cursed with an irritable temper. It was not uncommon for him to 
vent his indignation against his audience at the Adelphi in audible 
words, and I once saw him, in an impulse of wrath, fling his wig at a 
person in the pit. I have elsewhere stated that Mr. and Mrs. Yates 
played in a piece written by Mrs. Hall for the theatre of which he 
was manager, the Adelphi. One of the leading parts was filled by 
Harley, an actor somewhat famous at the time ; one of the good 
old school of players, an agreeable gentleman as well ; with a varied 
stock of information, and full of anecdotes of his calling in times 
past, when the barn was the actor's college. 

I had seen Miss O'Neill in 1815 in London, and in 1819 in Cork ; 
seen her in her best parts. She was very lovely when young ; had a 
sweet gentleness of expression and manner ; that probably supplied 
half her charm. But those who have seen " Helen Faucit " have 
seen a better actress, one of higher mind, more educated intelli- 
gence, more thoroughly comprehending the character depicted, and 
certainly more graceful in the eloquence of motion, that does so 
much for personations on the stage. I met Lady Beecher (Miss 
O'Neill) so recently as 1870, and conversed with her freely of her 
younger days ; though their date went back half a century and 
more, she did not shirk the reminder — as women too often do when 
age has taken the place of youth. If she was old, she was beautiful, 
there was the same gentle sweetness that gave her attraction when a 
girl ; the same gracious manner ; evidence of a happy and loving 
nature. 

The only other actor, excepting one, of whom I need speak is 
Charles Young ; if not among the first in his art, he held a rank more 
than respectable ; he would have been great in these days when me- 
diocrity comes to the front. Happily for our existing dramatic lights, 
the mighty men of the past are in their graves. Young was essen- 
tially a gentleman, on and off the stage ; of easy and self-possessed 
deportment ; he acted as if he could not overdo his part ; it was 
neither to the gods nor the groundlings, but to true and discerning 
critics, he looked for applause. Largely informed — " much had he 
read, much more had seen " — his mind was of a high order ; respect- 
horror the stranger at parting had a peculiarly embarrassing request to make. Said 
he : "I have left my watch at Dent's to be cleaned ; I wish, Yates, you would be 
kind enough to get it and forward it to me." Yates promised ; and felt as he did 
so that there was small chance of the promise being redeemed. How was he to get 
the watch from Dent's without knowing the owner's name ? However, Mathews 
came again to the rescue. By his advice Yates went to Dent's, and explaining the 
case, asked to have the names of all persons who had left watches during the week 
to be cleaned, read to him. Presently came that of Philips. How is it spelt?" 
asked Yates. " Philips," was the answer. " Put in another p," said Yates, " that's 
the man." Luckily it was ; and the watch duly reached its owner, and Yates's 
mind was set at rest. 



MACREAD Y. 



453 



able is a weak word to apply to him, but it is perhaps the best suited 
to describe his character. He seemed what he was — an admirable 
gentleman in all the relations of life. 

I spent a most pleasant week with him at the house of a mutual 
friend near Tring, and many hours with him at his residence, the 
northeast corner-house of the Old Steyne at Brighton. I esteemed 
him highly, and honor his memory as that of a largely accomplished 
and thoroughly estimable man. 

I knew more of Macready than I did of any other actor ; indeed, 
Mrs. Hall was the godmother of one of his sons ; yet with Macready 
it was very difficult to be always on good terms. He was overbear- 
ing and exacting, a despot in the theatre and a " master " at home. 
Yet no one was more revered and beloved by his own household ; 
none more respected for the blameless tenor of his life ; the high 
example he gave to all who came within the sphere of his influence, 
the untarnished honor that marked all his dealings with his fellow- 
men, and his strict performance of the duties of husband, father, 
and friend. The shadow on this bright picture was his temper ; it 
was terrible.* Mrs. Macready has told us that every night he prayed 
to be protected from its perilous power, a power that so often marred 
his prospects — negatived his good intentions, and rendered wretched 
those it was his dearest wish to make happy. We saw sad proofs of 
this while spending a week with him at his residence at Elstree, in 
or about the year 1835, when among the guests were Robert Brown- 
ing, then beginning his career, and John Forster, who certainly tried 
him often by needless contradictions — an assumed right to dictate 
even as to how a Shakespeare sentence should be emphasized, and a 
manner doubly irritating because at the same time that it seemed his 
aim to humble the great man, his language, intonation, and bearing 
were all modeled in foolish imitation of Macready's, until John 
Forster seemed only a bad copy of the actor. 

It was a pleasanter week I spent with Macready when he resided 
at Sherborne. He had retired from the stage, and his family were 
all with him — all excepting his admirable wife, who had then left 
earth. She was one of the best women, as wife and mother, I have 
ever known, gentle, conciliatory, utterly unlike the idea one forms of 
a lady who had been an actress in her youth. But in fact it can 



* Its outbreaks were always bitterly repented of. After thrashing the manager 
Bunn — a very natural if not strictly justifiable proceeding, for Bunn had repeatedly 
and grossly insulted him — he makes allusion to his violence in the following some- 
what exaggerated strain : 

" My shame has been endured with agony of heart, and wept with bitter tears. 
The fair fame of a life has been sullied by a moment's want of self-command." 
There occur frequent references in his Diaries to this "untoward event," as he 
terms it. It deserved no harsher name, considering the provocation he had re- 
ceived. 



454 



MACREADY. 



hardly be said that Mrs. Macready had ever been so. It is a gen- 
erally accepted story, that acting at Dublin, in Knowles's play of 
Virginius, the lady who was to be the Virginia was taken suddenly 
ill ; it was too late for the manager, without dangerous inconven- 
ience, to substitute another piece. Some one said that a young girl, 
"Kitty Atkins," could play the part ; she was called up, scrutinized 
by Macready, and did play the part ; but once only, Macready hav- 
ing so arranged with the needy actor, her father, sent her to school ; 
inducing his admirable sister to reside there with her ; and, after a 
lapse of two years, they were married. 

That is the usual story ; but, in fact, there was no peculiar ro- 
mance about the attachment ; he had seen her when a mere child, 
and she had impressed him then ; at the age of fifteen she was intro- 
duced to him as his Virginia of the next night. He "recognized 
her as the same little girl he had rebuked at Glasgow for supposed 
inattention." " There was," he says, " a native grace in her deport- 
ment and every movement, and never were innocence and sensibility 
more sweetly personified than in her mild look, and sparkling eyes 
streaming with unbidden tears." That was at Aberdeen (in 1820) ; 
and he found that, though still such a very juvenile actress, she was 
the support of her family. The devoted attachment, thus com- 
menced, led to marriage on the 24th of June, 1824. A better wife 
— one who fell more entirely into his " ways," he who was ever the 
god of her idolatry — no man ever had. Her educated mind and 
graceful manners well supported him in his claim to that status of 
gentleman to which he more aspired than he did to be hailed the 
foremost actor of his time. She brought up her children tenderly 
and wisely, discharging faithfully and systematically all her duties 
as wife, mother, companion, and helpmate. Whatever brawls, per- 
plexities, and vexations (and there were plenty of them) Macready 
found outside his house-door, none passed his threshold. She and 
her children, it may be feared, had to bear much at times from the 
outbreaks of his ungovernable temper ; but all was borne meekly ; 
for they truly and devotedly loved him ; and if his will was law, it 
was happily the exception for it to be other than a law of kindness 
to them. He was beyond all doubt a devoted husband and father, 
an elevated gentleman in all his thoughts and habits ; pure of life, 
scorning debasing pleasures ; and carrying, indeed, this loftiness of 
mind so far that he was rather ashamed than proud of the profes- 
sion of which he was so illustrious a member. It is said that, except 
in his personation of one or two truly heroic characters, his children 
had never seen him act. I know it was so until within a short pe- 
riod of the close of his professional career. He dreaded danger of 
their respect for him being lessened if they witnessed his persona- 
tion of some of the characters of Shakespeare, such as Iago and 
Richard III, the parts in which he most deeply studied to seem the 
villain he represented. 



MACREADY. 



455 



As a manager, if a despot, he was prudent, liberal, and honor- 
able ; he greatly advanced the art of the stage ; the pieces he 
brought out were perfect, as regards scenery and costume. He re- 
solved (greatly to his pecuniary loss) to revise the " free list," by 
excluding from it questionable women ; and in all ways purified the 
theatres over which he ruled. 

I think I see him now in the domestic circle at Sherborne. He 
had well earned the repose on his theatrical laurels which he was 
there enjoying ; but idleness was distasteful, perhaps impossible, to 
his nature. He became the teacher of his children.* His eldest 
daughter, Kate, had much natural talent, indeed none of them were 
without ability, and more than one had hereditary dramatic power, 
which it may be noted he studiously sought to repress. On the 
whole, it was a happy family. But, one by one, the golden links 
were broken. His admirable wife died in 1852, and Macready went 
to live at Cheltenham. I visited him there. 

Sir Frederick Pollock has given to the world Macready's Diary, 
and, in a measure, his Life. Like most books of the kind, it is de- 
fective ; lowering and not elevating its subject ; and would largely 
benefit by abridgment. 

No man can thoroughly succeed in a profession of which he is 
ashamed : in any pursuit, the nature of which he despises : that is 
clear. The story told of the dancer, Vestris, is the key to all suc- 
cess. " Eh ! la Philosophic est quelque chose — mais la danse ! " 
Perhaps, however, Macready assumed more than he felt, when ex- 
pressing scorn of the career of an actor. 

Of the vast number of men and women of mark who were his 
friends and acquaintances he names hundreds ; but merely names 
them. There are very few concerning whom he records a passage 
worth recording ; yet to some of them we know he was attached, 
while to others he was under weighty obligations — in a word, his 
sins were not of commission but of omission ; for it is, alas ! too ap- 
parent that all who came in the way of William Charles Macready 
were nothings — or less than nothings. I have made some reference 
to Miss Helen Faucit, who acted with Macready through many Lon- 
don seasons, and was his main support in all his leading parts. What 
would Shylock have been without Portia, Romeo without Juliet ? 
In short, is there one of Shakespeare's plays that could have borne 

* And not only of his own children : he had an evening school for the youths 
of the village. It was amusing to see him playing the pedagogue there, to an 
audience of country louts. 

" What is the capital of Italy? " he would ask of one of them. " Paris," would 
be the answer. Then Macready, in a voice sepulchral enough for the gloomiest 
soliloquies of Werner, would slowly assure the hopeful listener : " No, sir — Paris 
is not — the capital of Italy : the capital — of Italy — is Rome." Perhaps his manner 
impressed on hearers the desired information, but the performance was something 
like using a steam-hammer to drive in a nail. 



45 6 MACREADY. 

revival without a lady competent to satisfy the audience in the part 
of at least equal importance to that of the hero ? Helen Faucit was 
more than that : she was at least as good, as pure, as true an actress 
as Macready was an actor, as high in favor with the critic and the 
public ; and for much of his prosperity as well as his fame Macready 
was indebted to her. Yet (it is difficult to believe) she is not recog- 
nized in any passage of the Diary beyond the faintest possible praise, 
such as might have been accorded to one of Lady Macbeth's gen- 
tlewomen. Clearly, professional jealousy was Macready's bane, and 
probably originated much of the morbid sensibility that in a meas- 
ure poisoned his life. 

We have, however, to consider Macready in the light in which 
the volumes of Sir Frederick Pollock place him. They are not sat- 
isfactory ; indeed, they leave us little for gratification ; much for 
regret ; undoubtedly, his place will be higher in the estimation of 
those who do not, than of those who do, read them. 

Macready was essentially, I would almost say instinctively, a 
pious man ; his faith in revealed religion was deeply rooted. Re- 
ligious, rational, consistent, Christian, in the best sense, Faith was a 
part of his nature ; his continual prayer to God was for strength to 
master his dangerous temper, and for aid in bringing up his children 
in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.* 

There are those who think the life of an actor incompatible with 
a religious life. They are much mistaken ; the story of William 
Charles Macready may set them right. But the number of such per- 
sons has greatly lessened since the century was young ; and the pub- 
lic in general is ready, not only to acknowledge the great and pecul- 
iar temptations to which actors are exposed, but to admit that by a 
majority of the profession those perils are triumphantly surmounted. 

Macready died at Cheltenham on the 27th April, 1872, and was 
buried at Kensal Green, where lie so many who were his friends as 
well as his contemporaries. Of his family, very few are living ; his 
brother, the excellent major, who had served at Waterloo, died in 
1848 ; his sister Isabella, who had been his mainstay during nearly 
the whole of his career, followed ; and his first wife died in 1852— a 
death that " took," as he wrote, " the sunshine from his remaining 
life " ; six of his children had preceded him to the grave ; one of 

* I copy a passage in illustration. There are many such passages in his auto- 
biography : " March 3d, my birthday : Lifting up my heart in grateful prayer to 
God for a continuance of His mercies vouchsafed to me, I begin this day the 43d 
anniversary of my birth. Humbly and earnestly do I supplicate His goodness for 
the health, and peace, and virtue of my beloved family, and that He will be gra- 
ciously pleased to sustain me in all righteous intentions, and to purify my mind 
from all low and debasing thoughts and inclinations, that by His gracious help I 
may live through what He allots to me of further life, in peace of heart and in- 
creasing wisdom, educating my dear, dear family in His faith, fear, and pure love, 
and being myself a blessing in my affection and assistance, to my dearest wife, and 
also my dear family. Amen." 



KITTY STEPHENS— COUNTESS OF ESSEX. 457 

them, dear, sweet, kindly, and good Kate, the very apple of his eye, 
was buried at sea ! 

Death had levied a heavy toll on his home before he was himself 
summoned, and finding his age lonely he took another wife. She 
was in all ways an excellent helpmeet, and an accomplished lady ; 
an estimable woman ; of good descent also, for her grandfather was 
the artist Sir William Beechey, R. A. 

In February, 1882, died at the age of eighty-eight, the Dowager 
Countess of Essex, famous sixty years ago as " Kitty Stephens." 
There are not many now living who can, as I can, recall her in the 
zenith of her beauty and popularity. She quitted the stage in 1838 
to marry George Capel Coningsby, fifth Earl of Essex ; and, although 
left a widow, just a year after her marriage, she resisted all induce- 
ments to a second union. Amply dowered, and retaining, even in 
middle age, a considerable portion of her early attractions, her suitors 
were doubtless many. 

Lady Essex was respected as well as admired from the earliest 
days of her theatrical career to the close of her long life. I recall 
her as she was in 1824 or 1825, and continued to be for several suc- 
ceeding years — sweetly beautiful (that is the best term I can use to 
describe her), possessing a manner exceedingly graceful ; and, though 
but slightly endowed with dramatic power, an effective actress be- 
cause of the delicious voice with which God had gifted one of the 
most charming vocalists that ever made music of English words. 

In 1 88 1 I had a lengthy conversation with her concerning a long- 
departed past. I met her at a bazaar in the Town Hall at Kensing- 
ton ; the day's business being the sale of artificial flowers, the handi- 
work of " The Flower-Girl Brigade " — young girls who have been 
rescued from poverty, and worse, by the efforts of several benevo- 
lent ladies, the Baroness Burdett-Coutts being their president. We 
conversed of many people we had known nearly sixty years ago,* 
no one of whom was in 1881 surviving. She retained much of the 
gracious expression that characterized her in girlhood and woman- 
hood : 

" Age has its loveliness no less than youth, 
For kindness, gentleness, and love, and truth 
Make beauty — beautiful at every stage : 
Make beauty — beautiful at any age." 

* I am indebted to a friend for the following anecdote : " Lady Essex told me 
that when very young she was taken to call on Mrs. Siddons, whom she regarded 
with great awe. When addressed in the oracular tones of the English tragic muse, 
her reply was inaudible through fright. ' Little girl ! little girl ! ' said Mrs. Sid- 
dons, ' open your little mouth and let us hear your little voice,' a command the 
child mustered up courage enough to obey." The same friend adds : " Her kind- 
ness of heart was especially visible in her love of animals. Every day in winter 
the street before her door was strewed with crumbs for birds ; and many a stray dog 
found a home under her hospitable roof." 



458 KITTY STEPHENS— COUNTESS OF ESSEX. 

At parting I said, " Perhaps there have been grander and greater 
singers, but a sweeter singer than you were God never made ! " The 
compliment gratified her, certainly. She shook my hand warmly, 
and said, " Ah ! it is pleasant to live in a memory of the past ! " I 
little thought that within four months from that day she too would 
be numbered with the departed. She invited me to call on her. 
It is unfortunately one of the many opportunities I have lost ; I never 
saw her again. 

It can not be needful to say there were many other actors famous 
in their day who were personally known to me, but whom the pres- 
ent generation knows not. They live to be forgotten when they are 
dead. It is the actor's penalty for fame — that must be evanescent. 
Of their successors I have nothing to say ; but I have reason to 
believe they would shrivel up like perforated bladders if they could 
compare themselves with the great actors and actresses who preceded 
them in their grand art. 



RECOLLECTIONS OF SCOTLAND. 

In 1845 and 1846 Mrs. Hall and I made tours in Scotland ; our 
intention was to write a work after the manner of " Ireland : its 
Scenery and Character." We found we could not do the subject 
justice, and although several drawings had been made for us, and 
some of them engraved, we abandoned the undertaking. Of Ire- 
land we had previously known much : it was therefore comparatively 
easy to write about that country. Of Scotland we knew little : the 
difficulties appalled us, and nothing came of our two autumn visits 
to all the famous places in that delightful and heroic country — noth- 
ing, that is to say, in the shape of a book. Yet we had more than 
common advantages : tenders of information were generously made 
to us, facilities of all kinds were furnished to us, even to the placing 
at our disposal a steamship to visit Staffa and Iona, and the giving 
instructions that coaches by which we traveled should wait our lei- 
sure at show-places en route. Some notes of our travels may be 
interesting to my readers. 

The artist who was commissioned to make the drawings, and who 
" companioned " us to all the places we visited, was Mr. R. R. Mac- 
Ian, an artist of very great ability, who had been an actor. He is 
since dead. His mind was richly stored with legends, and he drew 
on its stores for our benefit wherever our steps were stayed. Mac- 
Ian sang Scottish ballads with inimitable point and humor ; once, 
indeed, when at our house and singing Burns's song, "We are na 
fou," he imitated the drunkard so naturally that the man in waiting 
whispered a hint that it would be wise " to call a cab." 

He was full of clan prejudice, and I believe would "have lifted 
a coo " right gladly, and without a scruple of conscience, if the vic- 
tim had been a Southron, or of a clan whose far-away ancestors had 
been foes of the Macdonalds. He would hardly let us stop an hour, 
and permitted us to admire nothing, on the mountains or in the 
glens, of any who bore the name of Campbell, and was indignant 
when we spent a night in the house of Macintosh, though the chief 
claimed to be captain of the Clan Chattan ; but in the pass of 
Glencoe he was, so to say, ferociously wild with excitement and de- 
light. He asked me if I dared to follow him through the glen, and 



460 



MAC IAN. 



I rashly accepted the invitation. It was nothing to him to run, 
climb, and scramble in his kilt, but to me it was a serious undertak- 
ing — embarrassed by the Saxon trews. Nevertheless, it was done, 
and for three hours I walked and ran, climbed ascents, and waded 
through water-courses, until we reached the end of the glen, where, 
according to my " authority," the massacre of the Macdonalds had 
taken place. Here he grew absolutely wild with excitement, and 
the curses he heaped on the doomed heads of the murderers were as 
earnest and bitter as if they had been " in presence there." He was 
a Roman Catholic, and I am sure he believed his curses had effect 
on the souls of the assassins. It would have been difficult to have 
found a pleasanter companion, one better informed on all that con- 
cerned the Highlands, better read in the history of the clans, the 
traditions and legends of the wild country through which he con- 
tinually led us. The pass of Killiecrankie, where Dundee was slain, 
and Glenfinnan, where the clans gathered to greet the young Pre- 
tender, the prince of so many hopes, and of their crushing and ter- 
rible disappointment — were to him as sacred as Thermopylae or the 
scene of the defeat of Porsenna were to the Greeks and Romans. 
With him, too, we visited the field of Culloden (Drummossie Moor), 
but we had there a still better guide — the estimable and accomplished 
author of many excellent works — Robert Caruthers. 

It might be said of Maclan that the heather grew in his heart. 
His experience of the foot-lights had not chilled, in the faintest de- 
gree, his love of Nature — that is to say, of Highland nature — and 
the scream of the bagpipes on the hill-side was sweeter music to him 
than any orchestra that ever played. It would astonish some people 
to learn that, though a keen lover of field sports, one who had lived 
weeks among the hills in the shooting season, and who could not 
pass a river without peering and " speering " as to the chance of 
finding a " saumon " in its depths, Maclan's tenderness toward the 
brute creation was remarkable — the tenderness of a girl, indeed ; I 
have seen him shed tears over a sick dog. 

He seemed to know every inch of the Highlands ; he accompanied 
us both by daylight and moonlight through the pass of Glencoe, 
through the wilds of Arasaig, round and over the well-known lakes, 
and to the renowned islands of Staffa and Iona, paused and pon- 
dered and conjectured with us beside Rob Roy's grave, and listened 
to the rush of the waters and the sough of the wind in the island 
burying-ground of the MacNabs, where the last of their graves has 
been dug — for the clan has found a home in the new world. How 
we enjoyed Blair Athol, and reveled in the pass of Killiecrankie ! 
Maclan's ready and rapid pencil caught the aspect of every scene, 
and transferred it to his sketch-book ; and then in the mountain inns 
he would tell us stories and sing us songs — all in keeping with the 
time and place. I can never forget the spirit with which he poured 
forth, from the summit of the monument in Glenfinnan, his friend 



SIX ALEXANDER CAMERON. 461 

Bennoch's song of " The Old Highland Gentleman," or how elo- 
quently he described there the march, in costume, of the clans to 
meet their Prince. The commemorative tower is reared in the cen- 
ter of the glen. Standing there, Maclan and I gazed around us, 
the one to murmur over, the other, perhaps, to be thankful for, the 
fruitlessness of the heroic efforts that followed the gathering of the 
clans in that valley at the call of the Prince in "Forty-five." 
Schooled by my guide, it was not difficult to realize the scene that 
had taken place there as nearly as possible, nay, I believe it was the 
very day, one hundred years before we stood there, and in our own 
way commemorated the event. 

From surrounding mountains there descend a number of bridle- 
paths, and along each one of these strode a band of sturdy High- 
landmen to swell the slender army of the Prince. Maclan, thor- 
oughly versed in the topography of the district, could point out the 
road by which each clan had arrived. The task was nothing to him, 
for he knew precisely where each clan had dwelt, from what direc- 
tion it must come, and through which pass it would descend into the 
valley. Story, or history, goes, that when the Prince reached the 
place of meeting, not a soul was in the glen. Suddenly, from behind 
a distant crag there sounded the pibroch of Clanranald, soon to be 
joined by another, then by another, until the gathering of the clans 
was complete, and threescore bagpipes outdid each other in hailing 
bonnie Prince Charlie.* 

One of the pleasantest days of our tour we spent in the dwelling 
of Sir Alexander Cameron, at Inveroilart, between Glenfinnan and 
Arasaig. The brave old soldier had been through the whole of the 
Peninsular War, and had fought in nearly every one of its battles. 
He had commanded the Rifles, the regiment in which he had served 
as a cadet in the ranks, and may be literally said to have fought his 
way up to the highest honors the service could confer upon him. It 
is not an exaggeration to say that he was covered with wounds. 
One day, when talking the subject over with him, he stripped to 
show me the unobliterated marks these stabs and shots had left. I 
think I am correct in saying they were near fifty. He was much 
crippled, yet he could still make a good cast over the river close by, 
and, aided by his henchman, land a salmon. 

Honored be his memory ! Proud of his name and nation, he was 
— the glory of his clan, and the pride of his country ! He had 
passed through innumerable perils and seen thousands fall by his 

* No doubt the piper of every clan played his own pibroch — and all together. 
I once heard a Scottish Highlandman declare that the greatest enjoyment he ever 
had in his life was one night when, sheltered from a storm in a bothie some twenty 
feet square, there were eight pipers shut up with him, and as each insisted on play- 
ing his own pibroch, all of them played together. " Oigh ! " ejaculated the High- 
lander, " tat was music ! " 



462 BEN LOMOND. 

side — to enjoy in his venerated age the repose he had so well earned, 
and to rest, crowned with laurels, in the land that gave him birth. 
A noble and heroic old man was General Sir Alexander Cameron : 
it is a privilege to have been his guest. 

I recall with much pleasure a visit we paid to Macintosh (it would 
insult him in his grave to entitle him Mister), the Captain of the 
Clan Chattan, as well as the chief of his own clan. A kind and 
courteous gentleman he was. He had been, I understood, a sea- 
captain, and had mixed much with the world. He honored us with 
peculiar honor — sending us to sleep in the bed in which the " young 
Prince," the Pretender, had slept ; the curtains were wrought with 
embroidered cats rampant, with the well-known motto which Scott 
has immortalized : " Touch not the cat without the glove." 

It is " a life-long memory " that which I retain of the view (what 
a weak word it is !) I witnessed from the summit of "lofty Ben Lo- 
mond " — a sunset on a summer evening. I shall not attempt to 
describe it : I do not think that any pen could do it justice. We 
were above the clouds that passed before or underneath — rolling, as 
it were, and unfolding ; clothed in most glorious light, in beauty that 
imagination fails to convey, that language is not expressive enough 
to suggest. But it is pictured on my mind to-day as vividly as on 
the day when it was painted there by the delicate hand of Nature. 
There — all around us, forming subordinate features of that glorious 
panorama, were a score of lesser mountains, while Loch Lomond 
was visible in its whole expanse. 

The silence was intense ; it seemed profanation to break it. It 
was, however, broken — suddenly and singularly. Maclan and I had, 
of course, taken care to reach the mountain-summit in time to wit- 
ness the setting of the sun. The gloaming (that delicious Scottish 
word) had scarcely commenced, when, to our great surprise, we en- 
countered a group of sappers and miners, whose hut was hidden by 
an intervening rock. They were employed in making "observa- 
tions," and had been "hutted " there during several days and nights. 
We naturally fell into conversation with them, and an incident oc- 
curred that surely I can not help recording. I asked how they con- 
trived to amuse themselves in that utter solitude. Did they play 
cards ? No, they had cards, but seldom used them. How then ? 
" We read," said the corporal. " And what do you read ? " I asked. 
The reply certainly startled but gratified me. ' We read Mrs. Hall's 
' Sketches of Irish Character.' " " Will you let me see the book ? " 
It was brought to me, and bore indubitable evidence of having been 
much in use. I said : " It may please you to know you are talking 
to the husband of the lady who wrote that book." The soldier 
looked at me and smiled. I repeated the words. " Oh, yes, I dare 
say," was his response, with a look of entire incredulity, not removed 



ROB ROY'S COUNTRY. 463 

when Maclan strove to confirm my statement. Fortunately my 
card-case was in my pocket ; its production was accepted as con- 
clusive evidence, and the men seemed as much gratified as I was by 
the occurrence. It appeared that the corporal had been for some 
time quartered in Wexford, where he acquired the book, the scenes 
of which are laid in that county. 

Scarcely less interesting was the ascent of Ben Nevis, then as- 
sumed to be the monarch of mountains in Great Britain ; " they 
crowned him long ago " : but science meanly and cruelly robbed 
him of his glory, and transferred it to his rival, Ben Wevis. It was 
a hard day's work to ascend and descend Ben Nevis ; but our climb 
was well worth the labor it cost and the time it consumed, from 
early morn to near midnight, for we were continually pausing to rest 
and look, as every fresh furlong of ground we traversed, nay, al- 
most every yard, gave us some new view to wonder at and admire. 
On the summit of the mountain we drank — though the month was 
July — the health of the Queen in snow-water, twenty feet above (as 
we then supposed) the highest point in her British dominions. 
There chanced to be a cairn of that height erected on the mountain- 
top to facilitate some observations of sappers and miners, and on 
that we stood ; the snow-water having been obtained from a crevice 
in a not-distant rock. 

At Oban the authorities placed a steamboat at our disposal to 
visit Iona and Staffa, and surely the time occupied in that journey 
was well spent. I need not say more on a theme that has been 
copiously treated in so many books. I may, however, here bring in 
an anecdote. Among our few fellow-passengers, for it was an act of 
grace to admit him, was a substantial Scottish grazier. On our re- 
turn, his friends met him on the quay, and in reply to their natural 
question, "And what did ye think of Staffa?" his answer was, 
" Weel, ye ken, they led me to believe there was only grass for one 
coo, and I saw three coos feeding on it." 

Of Rob Roy's country we trod every inch, supping at the Clachan 
of Aberfoil. I will not say it was the actual clachan where the 
" Dougal creature " defended the good bailie ; but of a surety we 
were shown at Perth the veritable stone house of Simon Glover. It 
may be as well to let imagination have free license on such occa- 
sions : at all events, nature was but little changed, in that immor- 
tally-chronicled district, and we followed in the footsteps of the 
" Wizard of the North," trying to persuade ourselves that we saw 
and conversed with the actual heroes and heroines of his immortal 
fictions and verse. That enjoyable self-deception was ours many 
times as we trod the streets of Perth, loitered in old Stirling, looked 
over heroic Bannockburn, paced the sand of the Lady's Isle, watched 



464 ROBERT CHAMBERS. 

the mists thickening round Ben Lomond, in short revived our ac- 
quaintance with Scottish annals by recalling amid the scenery the 
magician had pictured, the incidents and events he had narrated, 
for we gathered, as so many others have done, our knowledge of 
Scottish history largely from the " Waverley Novels." 

Wherever we went, some source of enjoyment and information 
opened up to us : we found everywhere friends who were helpers, 
and in not a few cases peculiar and exclusive means of obtaining 
information were placed at our disposal. If we had produced our 
contemplated book, it would have been full of gratitude for courte- 
sies, attention, and services received ; of high appreciation (based 
on confirmation of that which had previously been our theory) of 
the greatness of the Scottish character, of delight procured from the 
study of Scotland's heroic and romantic history, and of perpetual 
admiration of the beauty and grandeur of its scenery. 

Our guide in Edinburgh was Robert Chambers, and it is need- 
less to say that with such a companion there was nothing left unex- 
plored in and about " high Dunedin," that we reveled in Holyrood, 
laid siege to the Castle, rambled among Salisbury Crags and the 
Pentland and Corstorphine Hills. So guided, too, we visited Mel- 
rose, Abbotsford, Dryburgh, the Yarrow, the Clyde — in short, the 
hundred romantic and famous scenes in the Lowlands of which we 
had all our lives been reading. 

For Scotland has, what unhappy Ireland has not — a history : 
which all Scottish men may review with pride, no matter whether 
their sympathies be with the winning or the losing side. The defeats 
of a clan, and even sometimes of a cause, do not compel the loser to 
be less proud than the gainer — those, that is to say, those who are 
the descendants of either. Yes, the Scots have a history, not en- 
veloped in mists that give to it the dim obscurity of fiction, but one 
that is everywhere suggestive of glory — very rarely of shame. 

One of the most interesting days of my life was spent with Robert 
Chambers, as our guide in going over and about the memorable field 
of Prestonpans. He knew the associations connected with every 
spot, could show where he who, to some, was " the Prince," to others 
the " Pretender," stood — where the brave and generous Colonel 
Gardiner fell — every incident, in short, that was memorably con- 
nected with that eventful battle was referred by him to the scene of 
its occurrence, his facts being taken from history, and illustrated by 
the fiction of Scott in his story of "Waverley." 

I may sum up in a few comprehensive sentences the famous 
things we saw, while pursuing what has now so long been the tour- 
ist's line of march, and that any tourist may still see even more easily 
than we saw them forty years ago. 

Duly did we explore Loch Katrine and Loch Lomond, exclaimed 
in the good city, " Let Glasgow flourish ! " steamed up the Clyde in 



SCOTTISH SCENES. 465 

the track of the first ship that ever plowed the sea on wheels ; heard 
" Dumbarton's drums beat bonnie O ! " saw the tombs of a hundred 
chieftains around the ruins of Icolmkill ; beheld the grand structure 
built by Nature in the little Island of Staffa, the cave of which it is 
scarcely an exaggeration to say, as a renowned traveler has said, " I 
have seen the ruins of Thebes, I have seen the Cave of Elephanta, 
I have seen the Pyramids, but they are nothing to this ! " We 
rowed, too, across Loch Gyle, where were drowned the chief of 
Ulva's Isle and his winsome lady ; bade " God bless the Duke of 
Argyle " in his own clan-land — a heritage of which he may be, and 
no doubt is, prouder than of his dukedom ; rambled about the 
" Land o* Burns," guided by the sons of the poet ; were guests " in 
the auld clay biggin " in which he was born ; heard " Ye banks and 
braes o' bonnie Doon " sung beside that river ; saw the sad cham- 
ber in Dumfries where the Scottish poet died, and the church where, 
centuries before, the Kirkpatrick had "made siccar." 

We viewed Melrose " aright " by the light of a harvest moon ; * 
traced the line of fight at Killiecrankie ; bowed the head in rever- 
ence when crossing the threshold of Abbotsford ; pondered over the 
wonders of ancient art at Iona ; looked across Bannockburn from 
under the walls of old Stirling ; traced the devious course of Loch 
Lomond from the mighty Ben that overlooks it, and fancied it was 
almost as beautiful as all-beautiful Killarney, and the Trosachs as 
lovely as the Long Range at Lough Lene ; atecollopsin theClachan 
of Aberfoil ; danced a reel with a " flower of Dumblane " ; mourned 
the curse that will forever rest as a blight upon Drummossie Moor ; 
saw a possible descendant of the stag that Fitzjames " chased in 
vain " ; visited the glover's house in the fair city of Perth ; marched 
with Waverley through the pass of Ballybrough — for in this district 
veritable history is so interwoven with invented story that it is diffi- 
cult to separate the one from the other ; saw the silver strand of 
Ellen's Isle, and murmured in recitative, line after line, of the " Lady 
of the Lake." Alas ! there now plies a steamboat on Loch Katrine, 
to the pollution of its waters, and in lieu of the eagle's scream is 
heard the shrill whistle of the railway ! We talked with Rob Roy — 
at all events with a red-headed Highlandman who was christened 
" Robert " ; worshiped in the venerable cathedral of Dunkeld, and 
breathed in gloomy Glencoe a prayer for the Macdonalds, living and 
dead ; saw Birnam Wood and the hill of Dunsinane, names that will 
be familiar as long as our language endures ; missed our way in the 

* The story of Scott being asked by some friends to visit with them Melrose by 
night, they at the same time quoting his lines — 

"If you would view fair Melrose aright, 
Go visit it by the pale moonlight." 
And his prompt answer, " Yes, let us go by all means, for I have never so seen it," 
has been often and variously told. Maria Edgeworth told us the circumstance 
actually occurred to her. 

30 



466 SCOTTISH ARTISTS. 

pass of Killiecranlde, searching for the spot where was slain the 
"bloody Dundee" ; heard the "Birks o' Aberfeldy," sung by a bon- 
nie lassie in the glen and under the fall ; profitably expended hours 
in the " auld toon " of Edinburgh, and reveled in its history that is 
romance, and in its romance that is history. 

It was of course a strong desire on the part of Robert Chambers 
that we should make the acquaintance of Scottish artists. There are 
not many I need to recall ; but I may be content to make record 
here of a few. The President of the Royal Scottish Academy then 
was Sir William Allan, a painter of much ability and repute, who 
had to a great extent resided and worked abroad, especially in 
Russia. Sir George Harvey, who succeeded him, was an excellent 
artist and a most intelligent and agreeable gentleman. I may men- 
tion also D. O. Hill, a landscape-painter of great ability, and Macnee 
(Sir John Macnee, the late President of the Royal Scottish Acade- 
my), who continued to paint admirable portraits up to the close of 
his life, and, I hope, to tell Scottish stories, with the excellent zest, 
humor, and "nature" I witnessed in him forty years ago.* 

Of the men of letters we met, there are not many who demand 
especial record ; the greatest of Scottish writers were then dead or 
had made their way south. We did, however, meet, and often, vari- 
ous of the contributors to Blackwood, and other writers ; the his- 
torian Alison, Glasford Bell, Hugh Miller, and especially and above 
all, the eloquent and truly noble Dr. Chalmers, with whom we had 

* I recall one of Macnee's stories. A woman, whose soul was in her farm, and 
who had good knowledge of kine and crops, was listening to the arguments of a 
band of artists concerning art and its varied and numerous productions — listening 
with utter astonishment that such childish things should so largely occupy the 
thoughts of bearded men. At length, turning to the artist, she exclaimed in broad 
Scottish phraseology, "Lord save us, Mr. Macnee, if they don't think as much 
about pictures as if they were sheep ! " 

The anecdote recalls another told me by the artist, J. D. Harding. As he was 
sitting under a hedge sketching a distant view, a shadow suddenly came over his 
paper, and a voice followed. " I could do that : first you make a scrat here, and 
then you make a scrat there ; any fool could do that ! " 

Harding told me another story. During one of his sketching rambles he saw 
a cottage exceedingly picturesque, made so by neglect, that had left Nature to 
work her own sweet will. It was literally covered with brambles, wild roses, and 
honeysuckle, lichens, and mosses. He resolved to paint it, and asked leave of the 
owner, who was lounging at the door-post ; received a ready assent ; and said he 
would return to accomplish his task next morning early. Well, with early morning 
he was there. It is easy to picture his disappointment and disgust, when the land- 
lord met him with a smile and a smirk, and with some pride and much self-con- 
gratulation informed the painter that he had been up since daybreak and had 
made all ready. The picturesque cottage had been transformed into a neatly and 
carefully trimmed house : every loose branch had been cut away, the wild roses, 
honeysuckles, and brambles were all ruthlessly lopped ; and the whole had been 
made as neat as the tenant himself would have been when " dressed in his Sunday 
best." 



SCOTTISH AUTHORS. 467 

the honor to breakfast, and whom we heard preach to the heart and 
understanding — which no man ever reached by a surer path and with 
safer assurance of convincing results. 

Among the most pleasant memories I preserve is that of David 
Moir, the " Delta" of Blackwood 's Magazine. 

In the biography prefixed to Moir's works, Mr. Aird has furnished 
a most interesting memorial of his friend. Delta's life was singularly 
uneventful. It served, however, to illustrate the strength of the 
manly worth, backed by perseverance, which made his character 
respected by all who knew him. An earnest student, a good hus- 
band, a wise and loving father, a true friend, most active in a pro- 
fession (M. D.) which he practiced with honor, and with an amount 
of unostentatious beneficence toward those who, while they most 
needed, could least have purchased his help, an accomplished man 
of letters, who contributed much, both to the instruction and the 
amusement of the public, by his works in prose as well as verse, at the 
same time that he discharged all the duties of a good citizen. David 
Macbeth Moir may not take rank with the great poets of the world, 
but he has left behind him the pattern of a life in which, whatever 
powers he was endowed with, were used to their fullest extent, and 
to the noblest ends. 

It was at a slightly earlier date than I have been referring to that 
our first visit to Scotland was paid. Our tour was limited as to ex- 
tent, and was made without any special purpose, except to describe 
and report " the Burns Festival " held at Ayr on the 6th of August, 
1844. I had been engaged by Mr. Herbert Ingram, of the Illustrated 
London News, to write the descriptive article, which was to be illus- 
trated by wood-engravings. I was fortunate in obtaining the aid of 
a young Scottish artist, then but commencing a career in which he 
has since advanced to the highest eminence, occupying now one of 
the foremost positions in the profession. Sir Noel Paton is the 
Queen's Limner for Scotland, and ranks among the great painters of 
the century. 

In the " Book of Memories " I have given full details concerning 
our visit to Ayr — a day remembered as one of the brightest of our 
career.* 

* We had spent the evening preceding the day of the festival in the cottage 
where Robert Burns was born. There were present besides ourselves and our 
friend young Noel Paton — the three sons of the poet, the daughter of Colonel 
James Glencairn, McDiarmid, who wrote Burns's life, Mrs. Begg, the sister of the 
poet, and her son and daughter, and a very aged man — a plowman still — who had 
worked at the plow with Robert Burns ; no others. 

Mrs. Hall had her album with her ; Colonel James Glencaim had previously 
written in it, his name being prefaced by the following : ' ' This is confessedly a 
collection of the autographs of ' Lions,' and as it is impossible Mrs. Hall can get 
that of my father, she probably thinks the next best thing to obtain is that of one 
of his cubs. I therefore have much pleasure in transcribing at her request the 



4 68 THE BURNS FESTIVAL. 

The Burns Festival ! I do not think, if we ransacked the 
annals of the world from the earliest ages, they would furnish the 
record of a ceremonial more truly glorious. Was it a stretch of 
fancy to believe the poet was present on that day, to receive part of 
his reward ? 

It was not in " the Pavilion," when two thousand guests drank in 
silence the toast, "The memory of Robert Burns," and with cheers 
that shook the canvas of the tent, the healths of his three sons, seated at 
the side of the chairman, the Earl of Eglinton, that the real business 
of the day, was, so to speak, transacted. The glory and the triumph 
were for the prodigious crowd of peasants and artisans who passed 
slowly and in order before the platform, where the family of the poet 
had their seats, bowing or courtesying as each passed on receiving in 
return a recognition, the memory of which, no doubt, all of them 
carried to their graves. 

It was the cheers in Gaelic or " broad Scotch," and the waving 
of Glengarry bonnets, tartan shawls and shepherd plaids, that made 
the triumph and glory of that marvelous day, when one continually 
asked, " Was it only a man who had written verses, who was of no 
account in the world's estimation during his earth-life, who was born 
in the hovel within ken, lived in a continual struggle with poverty, 
and, to say the least, died needy — was it really to commemorate 
such a man that these plaudits went up from a Scottish field to a 
Scottish sky ? " Frequently afterward I conversed with Colonel 
Glencairn Burns, and also with the elder brother, Colonel William 
Nicol Burns, as to their feelings on that memorable day, and on the 
evening that preceded it, when the whole family met in the very 
small house in which the poet was born. 

As I have said, the record of those two days is fully given in my 
"Book of Memories." I have been tempted to enlarge upon the 
subject here to a greater extent than I had intended. There are 
few of my " Recollections " from which I derive more happiness, 
augmented, as no doubt it was then, and is now, by the fact that the 
" Health of Mrs. Hall " was one of the toasts proposed — by Glas- 
ford Bell,* and responded to with a warmth that was — not Irish but 
Scottish. 

first verse of the ' Address to a Mountain Daisy.' " When assembled in that cot- 
tage at Ayr it was suggested by our friend the Colonel that on the page which con- 
tained his name and the passage quoted, the names of the other members of the 
family should follow, as they never had met altogether before, and probably would 
never meet all together again. They all wrote their names accordingly ; all but 
the plowman, who could not write : and the page thus became one of the most 
prized and remarkable in the album of Mrs. S. C. Hall. 

* " I have to-day seen that not the gifted sons alone, but also some of the gifted 
daughters of Ireland, have come as pilgrims to the shrine of Burns ; that one in 
particular— one of the most distinguished of that fair sisterhood who give by their 
talents additional luster to the genius of the present day — has paid her first visit 
to Scotland that she might be present on this occasion, and whom I have myself 



PROFESSOR WILSON. 469 

At the Burns Festival we were associated with Mr. and Mrs. 
Robert Chambers, whose guests in Edinburgh we were. There was 
a mournful lack of attendance on the part of the English aristocracy 
of letters, indeed, even that of Scotland but slenderly gathered. 
Professor Wilson, Aytoun, Alison, Glasford Bell, William and Robert 
Chambers, were the chiefs of the Scottish group, while England was 
represented, except our humble selves, only by Douglas Jerrold and 
Charles Mackay, who came in the train of Herbert Ingram. 

However much I may desire to condense matter concerning our 
visit to Scotland, I can not while treating the theme omit further 
mention of one who was present at the Burns Festival — one of the 
greatest and most famous of Scottish men of letters — Professor 
Wilson. I saw him often afterward, and once in London, where he 
honored our house with a visit. But I prefer to retain him in my 
memory as I saw him at the " Burns Festival." I thus described him 
in connection with that day : 

"On the platform, on the seat immediately beneath us, sat a man of 
powerful frame, large-limbed and tall, who in youth was of a surety ' the best 
wrestler on the green,' and who in age seemed one of the elder sons of Anak, 
of whose ' boisterous vigor ' many pens and tongues had written and spoken. 
Look at his massive head, his clear gray eye, his firm-set and finely-chiseled 
mouth, his broad and intellectual brow, and you will be sure it is not physi- 
cal force alone that makes him greatest of the many great men by whom he 
is surrounded. His hair, thin and grizzled and unusually long, was moved 
by the breeze as he rose to speak, in a voice manly as his form, richly and 
truly eloquent. He was master of his theme and loved it ; but then and 
there, a stoic would have been an enthusiast with the cheers of such a multi- 
tude booming in his ears. While he was speaking, and his long, thin locks 
waved about in the wind, I thought I might steal, unperceived at such a mo- 
ment, a single hair. I saw one that I believed had been accidentally de- 
tached, and I ran the hazard of taking it. The professor felt the touch, and 
turning round, flashed upon me one of those fierce looks of which I had heard 
so much from those who had seen the ' lurking devil in his keen gray eye ' ; 
but at once perceiving that no insult was meant, and perhaps appreciating 
the motive of the theft, as I murmured out something like ' It is but one to 
keep forever,' his lips as suddenly assumed a smile of such lovable grace as 
might have won the heart of an enemy." 

At a good old age Professor Wilson died, robust of mind and 
body all his life ; its close was tranquil and consoling. There are 
monuments to his memory in Scotland, but none more enduring 
than are his many and glorious works. He was not reluctant to re- 
ceive the call when it came. On the coverlet of his bed was the 
Bible ; and, as his good, devoted, and accomplished daughter, Mrs. 

seen moved even to tears by the glory of the gathering. She is one who has 
thrown additional light on the antiquities, manners, scenery, and traditions of Ire- 
land, and whose graceful and truly feminine works are known to us all and whom 
we are proud to see among us." — Report in " Blackwood's Magazine." 



4 7 o JAMES HOGG. 

Gordon (his biographer) wrote, " He humbly looked in the coming 
days of darkness for the light that rises for the upright, and hope- 
fully awaited the summons that should call him to rest from his 
labors and enter into the joy of his Lord." 

James Hogg. — Among the few of many Scottish worthies of 
whom I give memories in these pages, surely I must not omit " The 
Ettrick Shepherd." How I should have enjoyed a day with him on 
the Braes of Yarrow ! Even now, across all the years that have passed, 
I can hear his hearty voice and his jovial laugh, and see his sunburned 
face not yet paled by a month of " merrie companie " in London. 
" I like to talk about myself " ; so begins his autobiography. No 
doubt he was an egotist, but so is every shepherd when he talks of 
sheep ; so is the mariner when he speaks of perils in sailing a ship ; 
so are all men who dwell on matters which constitute their person- 
ality," and which they understand better than others do. In short, 
so are all teachers. The accusation of egotism, and also that of pla- 
giarism, are easily made, but are not so easy of proof. Few men 
have so thoroughly triumphed over difficulties ; none came more tri- 
umphantly out of them. James Hogg was a more marvelous man 
than Robert Burns ; far less great as a poet certainly ; but marvel- 
ous in the dauntless energy with which he struggled against circum- 
stances, yet more adverse than those of Burns, and reached — not an 
untimely grave, but a secure position in the world of letters. Hogg 
was, as much as Southey, " a man of letters by profession " ; and 
surely one of the most remarkable men of the century passed away, 
when 

" Ettrick mourned her shepherd dead." 

A wrestle with fortune, indeed, was his : checkered yet successful, 
and marked during the whole of his fairly long life by good spirits, 
that were partly the result of a good constitution, and greatly per- 
haps derived from his sanguine self-esteem. 

I remember one of the evenings he passed with us : he had dined 
with Sir George Warrender, whom some wag suggested must have 
been Sir George " Provender " to Hogg, for the shepherd had evi- 
dently enjoyed the good fare provided for him before he came to us. 
He sang some of his own Jacobite songs with great gusto ; and as 
many then present saw him for the first and last time, they did not 
quickly forget him of whom they had heard and read so much. 

The visit of the Ettrick Shepherd to London took place in the 
year 1832. It is scarcely too much to say that the sensation he pro- 
duced in literary circles may be likened to that which might have 
been created by the temporary presence of Ben Nevis on Black- 
heath. A striking sight it was to see the Shepherd feted in aristo- 
cratic salons, mingling with the learned and polite of all grades — 
clumsily, but not rudely. He was rustic without being coarse ; not 



THE BROTHERS CHAMBERS. 47 x 

attempting to ape the refinement to which he was unused ; but 
seeming perfectly aware that all eyes were upon him, and accepting 
admiration as a right. 

He was my guest several times during that visit ; and at my 
house he met many of his literary contemporaries, whom he might 
not otherwise have known. Among them was Miss Landon, then in 
the zenith of her fame. When the one poet was presented to the 
other, the tall Shepherd looked earnestly down for perhaps half a 
minute at the petite L. E. L. " Eh ! " he exclaimed, in a rich manly 
" Scottish " voice, " I didna think ye'd been sae bonnie ! I've said 
many hard things aboot ye. I'll do sae nae mair. I didna think 
ye'd been sae bonnie ! " 

At the dinner at the Freemasons' Tavern on January 25, 1832, 
given nominally to commemorate the birthday of Robert Burns, but 
really to receive the Shepherd, many men of note were present ; the 
Scottish element naturally predominating. When the usual toasts 
had been given, the toast of the evening was announced, or, rather, 
should have been. But the toast-master had no idea that the guest 
thus honored was originally a simple shepherd : and consequently 
conceived that he was satisfactorily fulfilling his duty when he called 
on the assembled company for " A bumper toast to the health of 
Mister Shepherd." A roar of laughter throughout the hall was the 
result, and the hero of the evening joined in it as heartily as the 
rest. 

It is needless to say that I can not write my " Recollections " of 
Scotland without making grateful record of a Scotchman to whom 
we owed much, not alone for hospitality, but for gratification and in- 
formation. 

We had known William and Robert Chambers previously to our 
visit. Mrs. Hall had contributed to their Journal a series of Irish 
Stories, and an acquaintance had been commenced, that, I think I 
am justified in saying, ripened into friendship.* 

Robert Chambers, in association with his elder brother William, 
has conferred a weight of obligation on his country ; not only as ex- 
amples to cheer, to stimulate, and encourage all who would build up 
fortune on foundations of perseverance, industry, integrity, and right- 
eousness, but as laborious collectors of useful and instructive legend- 
ary and traditionary lore, principally found in by-paths, seldom 

* It is pleasant to record an anecdote of that series — subsequently collected and 
published in a volume — "Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry." Messrs. 
Chambers had agreed to pay a fixed sum for each story ; when the third or fourth 
appeared they doubled the amount. It is one — but I fear it is the only one of the 
kind — of the gratifying incidents connected with her or my career. I have good 
reason to know that notwithstanding this liberality, the book has been a profitable 
one to Messrs. Chambers during the forty years they have enjoyed the copyright, 
for it is among the most popular of Mrs. Hall's productions. 



472 ROBERT CHAMBERS. 

trodden by the many who are averse to anything like a troublesome 
search. Especially, however, is a large debt due to Robert, and to 
his brother William even more than to him (nor are their debtors 
confined to those of their own country), for the publication of the 
weekly periodical, Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, and a score of edu- 
cational works that have largely strengthened the progressive powers 
of the age. 

They were " self-educated " : but the term has widely different 
meanings in England and in Scotland. In England it infers, or 
did infer, in times gone by, a total leaving to chance of the method 
of preparation for " the battle of life." In Scotland it was rarely 
that any youth went out into the world without having to some ex- 
tent fitly armed himself for a struggle with fortune. Self-educated 
in the main, Robert Chambers was ; but a mind, naturally discrimi- 
nating as well as eager, had not failed to make a sound choice of 
the intellectual aliment it fed on. Years, as they passed, were 
marked by successive steps in the ascent from a humble position to 
an honored station ; and while William rose to be Lord Provost of 
his native city, Robert received the affectionate homage of leaders 
and guides of thought in every part of the world. He never passed 
beyond the rank of a plain citizen, and was unable to amass the for- 
tune his brother acquired. The reason was plain : he had eleven 
children, ten of whom were girls, while William, though married, had 
none. 

A better man in all the relations of private life than Robert 
Chambers never lived. Devoted and faithful as husband, thought- 
ful and affectionate as father, true as friend, useful as citizen, among 
Scottish worthies (and they are many) Robert Chambers holds a 
very prominent place. He would, no doubt, have obtained any 
public position he had sought for ; but, excepting the degree of 
LL. D. conferred on him by the University of St. Andrews, he had 
nothing resembling rank or title. I remember his telling me the 
great drawback to his success in this respect, was his lack of the 
organ of self-esteem ; it was remarkably deficient in his head. 

Robert Chambers had that inestimable blessing, a devoted wife, 
who was also an accomplished woman, skilled in most of the accom- 
plishments that are supposed to enhance feminine charms. It was 
a treat to hear her play on the harp, and a still greater treat to hear 
her sing an old Scottish ballad or a touching melody, to which she 
could give a wonderfully moving effect. During our stay in their 
house at Musselburgh, it was a beautiful sight to see her surrounded, 
by, I think, as many as seven daughters, the eldest of whom may 
have been twelve years old, the youngest not as many months. 
Three of the ten daughters born to Mr. and Mrs. Chambers died 
young, but the others married happily and well, and the descendants 
are numerous, although few of them bear the honored name of 
Chambers. 



ROBERT CHAMBERS. 



473 



His admirable wife died before him, his children had gone out 
into the world, and when he retired from active life, companioned 
only by one of his daughters and two grandchildren, he was alone, 
or comparatively so, and committed the error of a second marriage. 

When I saw him last, not long before his death, he exhibited un- 
mistakable evidence of a mind that was giving way. He was not 
unconscious of that gloomy fact, and he told me it was so. But he 
was a Spiritualist and had full faith in a life to begin when this life 
is ended. I am by no means sure he always entertained such faith ; 
indeed, his views had probably in earlier years been widely different. 
I can not of my own knowledge affirm that he wrote the " Free- 
thinking " book (which I never read), the " Vestiges of Creation." * 
I believe he wrote a part and superintended the publication ; but 
that the major portion was written by Leitch Ritchie, sometime 
editor of the " Journal." Whether he did or did not write it, cer- 
tain I am that he would not have written it, after he received the 
convictions of spiritualism and admitted the truths he had long re- 
sisted. Returning, one night, after a spiritual sitting with Mr. and 
Mrs. Newton Crosland, at Blackheath, he told me that so entirely 
changed were his opinions and views concerning Immortality and 
Hereafter, he had burned a manuscript on which he had been some 
years occupied, "A History of Superstition." I could much more 
largely illustrate this phase in the life of Robert Chambers. 

His brother William, in his interesting " Memoir," only admits 
that Robert " considered the phenomena of spiritualism worthy of 
patient investigation." That is not much : I affirm that he was as 
thorough a believer in the verity of these manifestations as I am ; 
that it was impossible for any just, reasonable, and thinking man to 
resist the evidence supplied to him — several times in my presence 
and at my house — that out of patient inquiry and thorough convic- 
tion came the belief of Robert Chambers ; and that the " prayers 
and graces to be said at meals all breathing the purest religious 
spirit " we read of in connection with his later years were the fruit 
of that belief, as well as his work on the " Life and Preachings of 
Jesus Christ, from the Evangelists." I can not doubt William 
Chambers will admit that Robert Chambers would have written 
nothing of the kind before he became enlightened and instructed by 
Christian spiritualism ; and if his brother is able to describe him 
when this life was closing, and the higher life about to be entered as 

* It was said that an " artful dodge " was practiced to mislead — as to the author- 
ship of the book. Proof-sheets were transmitted through the post to half a dozen 
persons to whom such authorship was likely to be attributed. The recipient, ig- 
norant of the trap, left them heedlessly on library or drawing-room tables, where 
they were seen by visitors. There consequently existed no doubt as to the identity 
of the author in the minds of persons who had actually examined the unrevised 
proofs of the work in the dwellings of those who would have been most readily sus- 
pected of producing it. 



474 



WILLIAM CHAMBERS. 



" uniting the piety of the Christian with the philosophy of an ancient 
sage," William very well knows that of Robert, nothing of the kind 
could have been said before he reached the sixtieth year of his age. 

We traveled together to Paris when the city was not quite so 
accessible as it is now. It was his first visit. I determined he 
should see and partake of a French dinner in all its perfection. In 
the morning I gave my order to a renowned restaurateur in the Pa- 
lais Royal. When we two went to partake of the feast, petit dishes 
came up one after another, and at length one of which with apparent 
indifference, I asked his opinion. He seemed really to be pleased ; 
another of the same material came next ; but there the disguise was 
insufficient, and Robert Chambers at once detected the tender limbs 
of frogs. Of that dish he declined to partake, but wrapped a por- 
tion of his share in paper, and no doubt showed it when he was at 
home in Scotland. 

When William was — as for three years he was — Lord Provost of 
Edinburgh, he lost an opportunity of making himself, or, at least, 
his official career, famous, and of linking his name with the great 
names in Letters and in Art of the century. He might have in- 
vited to the " Modern Athens " all the men and women of renown, 
who would have accepted the invitation — a " call " would have been 
received as a " command." The list would not have been limited to 
those of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales — foreign realms 
would have sent their intellectual celebrities, and there might have 
been such a gathering of the truly great as no city has ever wit- 
nessed, and as probably no city ever will witness.* 

William will die rich, leaving a fortune honorably acquired by 
the industry, energy, and rectitude of more than half a century.f 
Robert could have left to his successor and only son (another Rob- 
ert) little beyond the incalculable wealth of a name of which he may 
be more proud than if it had been that of a baron of seven descents. 
But Robert the Second is now, I rejoice to know, one of the long- 
honored and prosperous firm. It is still the firm of W. and R. Cham- 
bers — in 1883, as it was in 1823, sixty years ago. 

* A project of the kind had been successfully carried out by Alderman Spiers 
while he was Mayor of Oxford. He invited to be his guests at a feast in the grand 
old city, to every part of which he was on subsequent days their guide, about fifty 
persons eminent in Science, Letters, and Art. It was a great day even for stately 
and learned Oxford, marking an honorable epoch in its grand history and doing 
honor to the citizen who, if not himself a man of letters, was the personal friend 
and largely esteemed correspondent of many men and women who have thus made 
mankind their debtors. 

f Mr. William Chambers has published an interesting account of his early life, 
with some particulars concerning his later life, entitled " Story of a Long and Busy 
Life." I much wish it had been written from his notes by another hand ; but that 
will be done when he has left earth. He could not praise himself; that duty also 
must be the work of another hand. He was born at Peebles, on the 13th of April, 
1800 ; and is thus just a month older than I am. 1882 was the jubilee year of 
Chambers' s Edinburgh Journal. 



ROBERT CHAMBERS. 



475 



In 1 87 1 the valuable and valued career of Robert Chambers ter- 
minated, in so far as earth is concerned. Of such a man we may 
truly write that "his works do follow him." All who knew him will 
indorse this passage from the funeral sermon preached by a minister 
of the Episcopal Church of Scotland : 

" He was a man of high endowments, great and varied knowledge, deep 
philosophy, sound judgment, and refined taste. He was also what is far bet- 
ter than all this — a man of upright and unostentatiously religious life. Noble 
and kind in his nature, gentle and modest in his manner, genial and warm in 
his sympathies, faithful in his friendships, and generous in his dealings." * 

There is, no doubt, much concerning our interesting tours in 
Scotland that I have left unsaid : and many persons who are remem- 
bered by me with respect and affection ; men and women who, 
while adding to the fame of their country, have made all humanity 
their debtors for all time. 

♦Among the anecdotes (and there are not many) that illustrate the character of 
Robert, in William's Life of him, there is one that touches me, as it must have 
touched all readers deeply. In early youth he loved a maiden who became the 
wife, and the unhappy wife, of another. Robert was then poor and obscure — he 
afterward rose to be prosperous and honored. Many years passed, and the object 
of his early affections became indebted to his considerately administered bounty 
for her relief when in deep poverty. They were both aged when he paid her a 
farewell visit. What memories it must have stirred in each ! She dropped a tear 
on the hand he held out to her, and they parted. Again on this side of the grave 
they never met : but by his will he left her an annual sum " sufficient for her mod- 
erate wants." She needed it but for a short while, dying within three months 
after him who had been her lover and was her benefactor. Surely that pure and 
holy friendship was not dissolved by death. 

Scotland has not yet sufficiently discharged its large debt to Robert Chambers ; 
perhaps next to Walter Scott he is its greatest benefactor. For he has largely 
contributed to make Scotland known, and the boast that he is " a Scottish man," 
to be as high a one as a man can make in any part of the civilized world. 



RECOLLECTIONS OF IRELAND. 

TWENTY — FORTY — SIXTY — YEARS AGO. 

My task in this chapter is to picture Ireland and the Irish as I 
knew the country and its people before the enacting of laws that 
abolished distinctions of race and religion : so unreservedly and ef- 
fectually that the Englishman and Protestant has now no privilege 
either of birth or creed, in which the Irishman and Roman Catholic 
does not participate — and as fully enjoy. 

I shall show also that prodigious changes have been wrought in 
Ireland, during half a century, in matters of domestic interest ; and 
that numerous minor improvements have been progressing, side by 
side with the mighty revolution in the policy of England toward 
the sister island. Ceasing to regard Catholic Ireland either with 
apprehension or distrust, Protestant England has removed as far as 
was possible — or in one word entirely — the blots that for many cen- 
turies defaced the statute-book of these realms, and has studied the 
policy of justice : while striving to give to Ireland every advantage 
that could be derived from close union with the " Kingdoms " of 
Scotland, Wales, and England, each of which kingdoms, be it noted, 
continued to be ruled by a separate sovereign long after the English 
Henry II had established his authority over Ireland. 

With this brief introduction I proceed to my task of comparing 
the present with the past. 

These are my qualifications for the duty I undertake : Between 
the years 1815 and 1820, my father, Colonel Hall (of whom I shall 
have more to say hereafter), was engaged in working copper-mines, 
in the South of Ireland, principally in Kerry County, and in the 
west of the county of Cork. I was much about the country then ; 
and, later in life I paid to Ireland almost annual visits. Between 
the years 1839 an( I J 844, I posted on the common car — the time- 
honored but nearly obsolete "jaunting-car" — six thousand miles 
according to a pretty accurate calculation I made at the time. There 
is hardly a corner of the country, between the Giant's Causeway and 
Cape Clear, or Clew Bay and the Saltees, into which I have not 



TOURS IN IRELAND. tfj 

penetrated : seeking and obtaining the information I had undertaken 
to communicate to the public, in volumes which are not yet for- 
gotten.* 

The work was dedicated to H. R. H. the Prince Consort: the 
first number, when it commenced, and the last number, when it was 
concluded. It was issued in twenty-seven monthly parts. 

In 1879, my last visit to Ireland was paid, and that tour was the 
final opportunity of the many that in the course of a long life I have 
enjoyed of witnessing the changes that have resulted from time, edu- 
cation, numerous legal enactments, a larger and more generous and 
enlightened policy, more intimate intercourse between the two na- 
tions, augmented facilities for travel, and, above all, considerate 
thought and indulgent sympathy, f 

* " Ireland, its Scenery and Character," by Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall. 3 vols. 
Illustrated. 1840, 1841, 1842. 

The work was successful ; receiving much encouraging aid from the Press. I 
extract some passages from many reviews : 

" Written professedly to induce the English to see Ireland and to judge for 
themselves ; and both their verbal descriptions and their graphic illustrations are 
very likely to have that effect, which we too are willing to assist by our commenda- 
tion of the general spirit and execution of the work. . . . We may say, on the 
whole, that the literary, legendary, and antiquarian portions of the work are com- 
piled with laudable diligence ; the illustrations, for the most part, clear and in- 
teresting ; and the statements and opinions are in general as sensible, candid, and 
trustworthy as could be expected from writers who fairly confess their ' unwilling- 
ness to say anything discreditable to the country and the majority of its people.' " 
— Quarterly Review. 

" The book presents us with a body of facts relating to the sister kingdom, 
which, being the result of personal observation and investigation, ought to com- 
mand the attentive consideration of all who are interested in its welfare and pros- 
perity." — Times. 

" For its impartiality and truthfulness the two editors have been more than 
once complimented by persons of every party ; partisans may differ from the con- 
clusions at which Mr. and Mrs. Hall have arrived, but no one will venture to say 
that either the lady or her husband have misstated or misrepresented anything." — 
Morning Chronicle. 

" This undertaking has all the elements of the useful, informing, and agreeable. 
Useful, as tending to make the sister country better known to the British public, 
and so dissipating prejudice, attracting the tourist to Ireland, and, what is of much 
more importance, the capitalist." — Spectator. 

\ Forty or fifty years ago, " No Irish need apply " was a common addition to 
advertisements for servants, in newspapers — indicating a very general sentiment of 
aversion on the part of the English toward the Irish, when the one knew little of 
the other, receiving impressions almost exclusively from bad examples : judging, 
according to Churchill — 

" The many by the rascal few," 
and having their prejudices strengthened by Irish authors, painters, and actors, 
some of whom did their " best " to picture the Irish gentleman as a blackguard and 
the Irish peasant as a ruffian. At the outset of these details, I do not hesitate to 
say that this prejudice was continually and effectually combated in several of the 
works of fiction written by Mrs. S. C. Hall, in her " Sketches of Irish Character," 
" Stories of the Irish Peasantry," several of her novels, and notably in our joint 
work, " Ireland, its Scenery and Character." 



478 THE VOYAGE ACROSS. 

The voyage across St. George's Channel, at the time of which I 
write, and long afterward, was a far more serious matter than it is 
now. Sometimes, weeks were consumed in covering what we now 
regard as the brief distance between port and port. The packet 
could not sail in the teeth of the foul wind, or after starting had to 
" give in " and put back to wait for a change. In 1815, on my em- 
barking at Bristol, six weeks had passed before I landed at Cork. 
The accommodation on board was wretched : there was no woman- 
steward ; the berths for women were never separated from those of 
men — even by a screen. Often the " sea- stores " ran short before 
half the voyage was over ; and between contrary winds, miserable 
accommodation, and the scarcity and bad quality of provisions, a pas- 
sage to Ireland was often a more serious and expensive undertaking 
than is now a voyage to New York. On landing, the traveler was 
conducted to the Custom-House — to have his luggage examined, and 
pay duty on articles taxed ; and then he had to change his English 
money for Irish money, the coinage of one country not being cur- 
rent coin in the other. Ireland had her " tenpennies " and " fivepen- 
nies " : now found only in the cabinets of collectors. 

Sometimes, to shorten the journey by sea, the traveler lengthened 
his journey by land ; and instead of sailing from Bristol, started, as 
now, from Holyhead. In that case the period of discomfort afloat 
and sea-sickness was likely to be a brief one ; but what a wearisome 
journey it was by coach, especially from the metropolis ! If Bristol 
was twenty hours from London, Holyhead was more than forty. 

But the road to Holyhead had one special peril and annoyance. 
Between the port and Chester City is the Menai Strait, which the 
traveler now crosses in a few seconds, over, or rather through, a 
bridge. A marvelous work it is, one of the glories of modern science 
— a grand victory of engineering skill, which our forefathers would 
have as little expected could be achieved as the construction of a 
turnpike road between the earth and the moon.* But at the time of 
which I write, the coach stopped on one side of the estuary to dis- 
charge its cargo of passengers and luggage into boats, in which they 
were ferried across and consigned to the coach that waited for them 
on the other side f — in the Island of Anglesea. 

* In March, 1850, "the first railway train rushed over the Menai Strait by 
means of the tubular bridge." 

\ It would be difficult to exaggerate the annoyance to which passengers by this 
route were subjected. Fancy removal from the inside of a coach — bad as it was — 
to the ferry-boat, in any weather, often while rain poured in torrents and frequent- 
ly when snow was a foot deep on the ground. These were not the only evils. The 
ferrymen were inconceivable savages — Welshmen who spoke no English — cared 
nothing for the guard, and exacted what they pleased from passengers. Once I 
nearly lost my life in passing. The men had grossly insulted a lady, a stranger to 
me, who had resolutely refused — right or wrong — to pay for a little dog she carried 
in a basket on her arm, and which they seemed inclined to destroy. I naturally 
interfered for her protection, pushing her assailant away and holding him back, 



THE JOURNEY TO-DAY. 479 

The coach conveyed the passengers to the wretched inn at Holy- 
head, where they were " refreshed " before embarking on board the 
miserable packet-boat that lay alongside the quay, prepared — " wind 
permitting " — to make the voyage across, or waiting till the wind 
did permit, to the great joy of the innkeeper, whose beds and 
" shakedowns " were all engaged — and paid for, for one night at 
all events, in anticipation of the necessary endurance of purgatory 
from Welsh fare and Welsh fleas. The voyage was shorter but 
not better than that made from Bristol, or Liverpool, or Milford 
Haven. 

Few went from England to Ireland, or from Ireland to England, 
except those who were compelled by necessity or duty. I have 
often thought that among other patriotic impediments to the honor 
of M. P. — in 1800 — among the especial " curses of the Union " — was 
this, that Irish representatives would be forced to cross the channel 
in a sailing-packet, and make the journey to London in a mail- 
coach.* 

It is needless to contrast these enormous drawbacks with the 
comforts of the voyage now ; less than twelve hours takes the trav- 
eler from London to Dublin ; he will not encounter a single annoy- 
ance en route j and may from any part of Ireland make an engage- 
ment, at any hour, in any part of the kingdom, with a certainty of 
keeping it ; while two posts daily convey letters from places hun- 
dreds of miles distant ; the London newspapers of the morning are 
in Dublin in the evening ; and the telegraph communicates a mes- 
sage within an hour. 

Irish journals that bear the date of fifty or sixty years ago, are 
full of passages like this — " No news from England for a week." 



thus giving her free passage to the shore. In an instant I was attacked by half a 
score of ruffians, who were dragging me to the side of the quay in order to push me 
over. I had presence of mind enough to fling myself on the ground and kick out. 
One fellow seemed more resolute than the rest, when luckily my hand lighted on a 
large flat stone : with that I struck my assailant full in the face, and while he ran 
screaming to his comrades, I was up, running " for dear life" to the coach, and 
mounted " in a jiffy " ; Mrs. Hall being inside. The coachman, who had been 
waiting for me, whipped up the horses, and before the gang could rally, we had left 
them behind. On returning by the same route I succeeded in avoiding recognition, 
and although I had received a lesson anent 

" Those who in quarrels interpose," 
I did not, I fear me, profit by the teaching : although a pair of black eyes made 
me a recluse during some days in Dublin. I hope, however, that what I did in 
1825, I should do, or try to do, in 1883. 

* Before the advent of the steamship upon the Irish Channel it was not an un- 
usual thing for six English mails to be due in Dublin, and upon many occasions 
two or three weeks passed without any delivery of English letters. . . . How, 
with better accommodation and the spread of knowledge, the correspondence in- 
trusted to the Post-Office Department has increased, may be inferred from the fact 
that whereas half a century ago a couple of small sacks held the English mail, now 
the mails weigh about eight and a half tons daily. 



480 TRA VELING IN IRELAND. 

Traveling in Ireland was on a par with traveling to Ireland as 
regarded delays and discomforts. Fifty years ago, journeys in the 
Green Isle were ordinarily made at the rate of twelve hours to fifty 
miles. Somewhere about that time I journeyed from Cork to Skib- 
bereen by a mail-coach on its first journey ; I can recall now the 
rush from every cabin, and the crowds in every town it passed by 
and through ; some astonished, others terrified at the new wonder.* 
In general there was no way of traveling except by the old jaunting- 
car. [The Irish car has been compared to Irish reciprocity, which 
lets you see only one side of a subject, and to Irish character, that 
limits the vision to a one-sided view of everything.] 

The old roads in Ireland were solicitous only of taking the 
straightest line of approach ; and that was indeed a formidable ob- 
stacle which could prevent them from being laid down as the crow 
flies. Regardless of acclivity or declivity, of cliff or rock, of stream 
or torrent, few mountain elevations, however bristling with crags, 
or formidable the aspect of their precipitous sides, deterred the en- 
gineer who planned an Irish road. He carried it over the loftiest 
summits, the wildest moors, to the bottoms of the deepest glens, and 
along the most dizzy steeps, overlooking the most precipitous de- 
scents. Before railways made journeys easy and comfortable, the 
roads had been greatly improved ; but I can remember when many 
of them that led from town to town were barely passable to wheel- 
carriages. So lately as 1840, going from Glengariff to Kenmare, we 
had to leave the car and walk some distance, while peasants helped 
it over the ruts. Irish roads are now foremost among the best in 
the kingdom. 

Turnpikes are now all gone; but in 1843, " Bianconi's " charge 
for passengers from Clonmel to Waterford was three shillings and 
sixpence ; from Clonmel to Kilkenny (about the same distance) it 
was four shillings and sixpence — in consequence of heavy turnpike- 
tolls. The roads are now kept in order by Grand Jury present- 
ments. 

Bianconi, a native of Milan (he was one of the " alien " mercies 
given to Ireland), ran his first car from Clonmel to Cahir, some six 
or seven miles, on the 5th July, 1815 (it should be kept as a day for 
public remembrance in Ireland). In spite of much discouragement 

* Derrick, so late as 1760, wrote that he set out from Cork to Killarney "on 
horseback," the city of Cork not affording at this time any sort of carriage for hire. 
I remember a popular caricature that had for its subject Irish traveling. The 
chaise let in the rain at the roof, while the traveler's legs were protruding through 
the floor; a girl was advancing with a red-hot poker, "just to give the baste a 
burn, yer honor, to make him start." 

" From the inn-yard came a hackney-chaise, in a most deplorable state ; the 
body mounted up to a prodigious height, on unbending springs ; one door swing- 
ing open, the blinds up, because they could not be let down, the perch tied in two 
places, the iron of the wheels half off, half loose, wooden pegs for linch-pins, and 
ropes for harness." — Maria Edgeworth. 



BIANCONI'S CARS. 4 8i 

he persevered ; when I saw and conversed with him — one of the 
best friends Ireland has ever had — in i84i-'42, his cars traveled 
3,600 miles daily, visiting 128 cities and towns, and he had horses 
more than enough to mount a regiment of cavalry. Talking with 
him one day at the door of his office in Clonmel, while his car, al- 
ways punctual, was about to start, and there was just five minutes 
to spare, " Come this way," he said, " it's a short cut, and will save 
two minutes." It was the key to his success : he knew the value 
of time ; a knowledge denied almost entirely to the country of his 
adoption.* Bianconi's drivers carried no weapons, even in the more 
disturbed districts, in perilous times. His cars were never injured ; 
never even once stopped ; well might he say, as he did say to me, 
" That fact gives me more pleasure than all the other rewards of my 
life." 

It will be readily imagined that in the days before railways the 
small Irish farmer had difficulty in finding a market for his produce. 
There were itinerant dealers who traveled the country, buying from 
the peasantry to sell in the towns ; but the farm produce, to be dis- 
posed of, so far exceeded the means available for bringing it to 
market that it was frequently left a dead weight on the farmer's 
hands. Another difficulty was the extreme scarcity of money, causing 
barter to be a far more common mode of dealing than sale. In the 
locality where I lived, as a boy, it was easy to obtain eight eggs for a 
penny, and a couple of chickens for eightpence, while a "weight" (a 
stone and a half) of potatoes seldom cost more than twopence. 

And the wages of laboring men, what were they ? Sixpence a 
day was a liberal wage. My father at one time employed, at one 
of his mines, three to four hundred men, and fivepence was the sum 
each earned daily. No doubt it was above rather than below the 
average rate of pay. In fact, the earning of wages was uncommon ; 
fortunate were they who could sell their labor. As a rule, each man 
dug his patch of ground, planted it ; the fruits just supplied him 
with food enough to prevent hunger becoming famine, and enabled 
him and his family to drag on in a state of semi-starvation from the 
cradle to the grave.f 

To English rural districts, as well as to Irish, the iron road has 
opened up markets that were not before available. In England, 

* " Sure it's only my time," was a sort of Irish aphorism. It is the title of one 
of Mrs. Hall's most characteristic stories. I once sent a man on a message from 
Skibbereen to Cork — thirty miles ; it took him two days going and coming. He 
had no idea of demanding more than his two days' wages. Sure 'twas only his 
time ! 

f The " garden " was the quarter or half acre usually attached to the cabin in 
which the potatoes were planted, always, of course, by spade-labor, and from 
whence they were dug to be eaten. Cabbages were seldom planted, carrots and 
turnips never — nothing but potatoes ! 

31 



4 82 IRISH CABINS. 

too, the tillers of the soil were, fifty years ago, wretchedly housed ; 
but the hovel of the Irish peasant was by far the more miserable of 
the two, and the changes in his dwelling have been proportionately 
greater. I found the " cabins," as they used to be called, and per- 
haps are called now, bad enough in 1879, yet greatly improved from 
what they were in 1820. It may not be the best, but certainly not 
the worst of those cabins that I picture, as I recall their wretched 
aspect to memory. This is the sight I see : a growth of diseased 
vegetation covers the thatched roof (a roof of slate distinguished 
the houses of the doctor, the landlord, and the priest) ; a cesspool 
of stagnant water oozes from the dung-heap, at either side of the 
door ; a big slab or flat stone forms a sort of bridge across it ; the 
mud walls have given way in parts, and there is a gradual sinking 
of the fabric ; the door is hanging by broken hinges ; two holes 
indicate windows ; into one of them, if the weather be damp, the 
tenant's top-coat is thrust to keep out the cold, the other is partially 
boarded. The inevitable consequence is, that within, when the 
turf-fire is lit, there is an atmosphere of smoke. Go in ! In one 
corner is a heap of turf, crowned by the kish. In another corner 
is the potato-heap, kept somewhat in order by a strip of board. 
Generally the rain finds its way through some part of the roof, and 
there is a consequent puddle on the floor. The pig goes in and out 
as he pleases ; there is a perpetual " hurrish " to drive him from the 
" pratee " corner. Of course there is no grate (often no chimney) ; 
and, although the hut may be at times divided into two rooms, as 
a rule there is but one, in which a whole family live and sleep. 
The bed is a mass of damp straw with a single blanket or quilt, and 
there is a straw shakedown for the children. Heather, though a 
hundred times better than straw, and always at hand, is a luxury 
seldom resorted to. To complete the bedding there are the extra 
coats and gowns of the household. When the family retire to rest 
at night it is likely that as many as eight or ten human beings of all 
ages, and both sexes, will be crowded into this one miserable room. 
Water is seldom used for any purpose, personal or domestic ; * in- 

* I do not know how it is now, but in my younger days it was rarely an Irish 
peasant used water — except to drink it. A sea-bath was a rarity and never a lux- 
ury. To " take a dip " was seldom thought of. I have known many grown-up 
young men who had not taken one in a year: women never bathed, except their 
feet, which they washed often in running brooks. I am reminded of an anecdote 
told me by the sculptor, Margaret Foley. A friend of hers at Florence had a pretty 
waiting-maid ; the Florentine valet was " sweet on her." He was asked if he meant 
to many her. This was his answer : " Marry her ? Oh, no ! She is English, and 
she would wash me, and I should die /" I am also reminded of an anecdote told 
to me by Ugo Foscolo — who meant it to illustrate Irish character. Two lazy Irish- 
men were stretched on the sward of a fig-garden in Italy. They were hungry, but 
had not energy enough to rise and pluck and eat. At last a fig fell from a tree 
right into the mouth of one of them. "Ah," said the other, "you are lucky, Pat ! 
It didn't fall into my mouth." " Yes," was Pat's comment; "but it didn't come 
chewed, though ! " 



IRISH CABINS. 



483 



deed, there is nothing about the place in which to collect and keep 
it. The food is potatoes — eaten twice a day. Buttermilk some- 
times ekes out the feast : now and then there is the luxury of a salt 
herring, over which boiling water is poured to make a sort of sauce, 
into which the potato is dipped. " Butchers' mate " is never thought 
of, and bread but seldom [I have known old men who had never 
tasted the former, and young men who had never eaten the latter] ; 
fish is a rarity, although shoals are to be met with all along the 
coasts, and the rivers and lakes abound in trout — ready to be caught 
and eaten. 

The furniture consists of the kish, a table, two chairs, a three- 
legged stool, a dresser, seldom absent, but usually empty, or con- 
taining two broken plates ; a wooden pipkin, an iron pot, which 
rarely leaves its place over the turf fire, and the bedding, such as I 
have described — sometimes raised by blocks of bog-oak from the 
floor : * 

" An Irish cabin, architecturally described, is a shed about eighteen feet 
by fourteen, or perhaps less, built of sod (mud) or rough stone, perhaps with 
a window or a hole to represent one, it is thatched with sods, with a basket 
for a chimney. It generally admits the wet and does not pretend to keep 
out the cold. A hole in the ground in front of the door, or just on the side, 
is the receptacle for slops, manure, and other abominations. This one room, 
wretched as it is, is generally all the shelter that is afforded for the father and 
mother, with the children, and perhaps the grandmother, and certainly the 
pig." — Tite's " Report to the Irish Society," 1836. 

The house of the well-to-do yeoman farmer (the position such a 
man as I describe would have held in England) was not much better 
than that of the peasant. In the year 1840 I visited such a man in 
Wicklow County, near to Glendalough, and noticing the air of penury 
and misery that pervaded the dwelling, I left a shilling on the dirty 
dresser. The guide who was with me said, when we had left the 
cabin, " May I make so bould as to ask what yer honor left the shil- 
ling for?" "Well," I said, "though but a trifle, I thought it might 
help them in their poverty." " Poverty ! " exclaimed my guide. 
" Yah ! Poverty ! He has ten cows and fifty sheep upon the 
mountain, and is, may be, richer than yer honor." And such I found, 
upon inquiry, to be fact ; yet for squalor, dirt, discomfort — all that 
makes home wretched — there were not many worse hovels. That 
was by no means an isolated case.f 

* " There was just room, with care, to ride my horse on the crooked pathway 
between the dunghills and cesspools. I went into one of these cottages. It had 
one room, no chimney, and a turf-fire on the mud floor. Its furniture consisted of 
a bedstead with some hay on it, and one blanket, a deal box, and an iron pot. 
There were five children in it, so ragged that they were nearly naked, and two 
pigs begrimed with the soil from the cesspool at the door. The mother was 
scarcely clad and barefooted. Cottage, children, pigs, and mother, were all equally 
dirty." — Foster's " Ireland." Description of a cabin in Mayo. 

f In Mayo, in 1845, I measured a cabin in which a family lived, and had lived 



484 



THE IRISH COTTER. 



I rejoice to believe there has been in this respect a great change. 
Thus spoke Lord O'Hagan at the Social Science Congress in 1881 : 

" I may confidently say that, in a department so deeply affecting the com- 
fort and the happiness of a people, Ireland need not be ashamed of the prog- 
ress she is making and has made. And for her that progress is especially 
important. Health and social morals run closely together. Cleanliness and 
godliness are in alliance ; and wholesome and commodious dwellings are 
important instruments of civilization. The squalidness of his home drives 
the artisan for light and solace to the public-house. The mud cabin, with 
its single room and crowded foulness, is not very compatible with the forma- 
tion of habits of ordered industry ; and, save in a country still marvelously 
pure, its inmates would be subjected to many dangers." 

Picture the Irish cotter of fifty or sixty years ago. The " cau- 
been " that covered his head was a fragment — the brim in nine cases 
out of ten gone ; shirts were rarities ; his coat was always torn, and 
never mended, or, if patched, was a coat of many colors ; his 
breeches were usually of corduroy, never buttoned at the knee, for 
the buttons had departed, but sometimes tied by shreds of twine. 
His stockings, when he wore any, were loose and hanging about his 
heels ; and through his brogues, when he had them on, his toes pro- 
truded. Often he wore a large cloak-coat with a cape, descending 
from the neck to the heels, and as worn and ragged as other portions 
of his attire. His clothes, such as they were, served him, as I have 
said, in lieu of blankets at night. The clothing of the " childre " 
consisted of one ragged covering of discolored stuff, called a frock. 
The peasant's wife or mother (a cabin was seldom found without 
both) might have compressed her whole wardrobe into a bandbox 
had such a thing been known. 

Such was the figure the Irish peasant everywhere presented in 
my boyhood. Three or four years ago I saw about four hundred 
men and women — belonging to the peasant class of to-day — as- 
sembled at Killarney. There was not among them a man in rags or 
a woman barefooted. Sixty years ago it would have been difficult to 
find in a similar group a man with a decent coat or a woman who 
wore shoes. 

" The pig paid the rent," and when sold a " boneen " was ob- 
tained to be reared for another year. A litter of pigs was rarely 
seen about a cabin, and to bring any part of one " to table " was a 
thing never looked for. Of course a sty was out of the question ; 
never was such a thing seen in any village or town of moderate ex- 
tent. 

And what sort of a pig was he ? A long-legged and sharp- 

for two years ; it was exactly ten feet long by seven feet broad and five feet high ; 
it was built on the edge of a turf bog ; within, a raised embankment of dried turf 
formed a bed : a solitary ragged blanket was the only covering. 



THE CONNAUGHT PIG. 485 

snouted creature that no amount of food or training could ever fat- 
ten. The breed was called "the Connaught pig." You could count 
its ribs without feeling them. Fat was never found anywhere about 
the animal, living or dead. He was fed on offal, with sometimes the 
luxury of potato-skins, and was the general, the only scavenger of a 
town or village, where he roamed at large without let or hindrance. 
Like the dogs of Pera, he averted the evils that arise from impurities. 
When converted into bacon his flesh was so thin and coarse as to be 
marketable only among the poorest classes ; those who could afford 
better food imported it from Yorkshire or Wiltshire. Even the 
wealthiest farmers failed to make salable material out of the Con- 
naught pig — the only pig that up to a comparatively recent period 
was to be seen in the streets and roads of Ireland. 

How is it now ? Every cabin has a pig-sty. That was the result 
of a legal enactment making the erection of sties compulsory. Al- 
though now, as heretofore, he often enters the parlor, it is only as a 
visitor — no longer as an inmate. The Connaught pig is now com- 
pletely gone. The pigs of to-day are short in the legs, broad in the 
flank, rich in lard ; in a word, the dittos of those you meet in Wilt- 
shire. Irish hams that, half a century ago, were rejected with scorn 
in all decent shops of England, are now in high favor with dealers, 
and bring prices equal to those of York.* Every cabin has such a 
pig, and it " pays " to give him food, often better than that upon 
which his owner feeds. Russell, of Limerick (another" a lien " mer- 
cy), was, I believe, the first to perceive the benefit that might be 
wrought by this wholesome innovation — to show that there was no 
good cause why pigs born and bred in Ireland should be a whit in- 
ferior to those grown in any other country in the world. f 

I have intimated that poverty — despairing poverty — was the al- 
most invariable lot of the Irish peasant fifty years ago. The men 
wore shoes, for work could not be done without them ; the women 
were always barefooted. I have been told by shoemakers in country 
places that shoes for women formed no portion of their stock in trade. 
A shawl was usually the common property of the females in a house- 
hold ; a needle and thread were frequently not to be found in a 
whole town-land — sufficient reason why the proverbial rags were sel- 
dom mended. When means of mending were obtainable, a black or 
gray coat would generally be patched with a bit of red or blue cloth. 

* This statement will be confirmed by any dealer in hams and bacon. I have 
consulted several, 

•f- A pleasant anecdote was told to me by Chief-Justice Doherty. He was visit- 
ing at the house of a country gentleman ; the steward was showing him the im- 
provements, when they approached to examine a series of recently erected pig-sties, 
his lordship much commended their neatness and order, saying, " My friend, the 
pig is well provided for here." " Yes, yer honor," was the reply, " he has every 
convanience that a pig can ax." 



486 "SQUIREENS" AND "HALE-SIRS." . 

Men and women looked on rags as matters of course. It was not a 
libel when the English traveler declared that he never knew what the 
English beggars did with their cast-off clothes until he went to Ire- 
land ; while the story, told by either Lover or Carleton, of an Irish 
haymaker gleefully changing his habiliments with a scarecrow in an 
English field, is scarcely an exaggeration. 

When a lad, I was present at a dance, and had to make my bow 
to a merry lass, who was sitting in a corner. To my surprise, she 
declined to be my partner, declaring she could not dance. There 
was a loud protest in the assembly, and an assurance that she was 
the best dancer in the barony. Upon her still objecting, a stout fel- 
low pulled her from her seat, exclaiming she should not balk the 
young gentleman. The cause of her coyness was then obvious — 
she had on neither shoes nor stockings. It was the work of a mo- 
ment for me to take off mine ; and we footed it bravely, in bare feet, 
on the clay floor of the cabin. 

On such occasions the piper had invariably a strong tumbler of 
whisky by his side, from which he often imbibed till he could play 
no longer ; and it was also the custom that a hat went round to re- 
ceive the pennies that were to pay him for his night's work. The 
whisky (for him, ad libitum) was generally the contribution of mine 
host of the shebeen-shop, and its distiller was a " boy " from the 
mountains, who had made it where " kings dinna ken " ; and who 
was among the dancers. 

In country parts the houses of the smaller gentry were not very 
much better than the cabins around them. What of the people who 
inhabited them ? 

The " half-sirs " or " squireens," a class peculiar to Ireland, are, 
I believe, unknown now.* Each was usually blessed with a house- 
ful of sons and daughters, who considered idleness a sign of gentil- 
ity, and scorned to do any useful work. Trade of any kind, except 
in horses and smuggling, was a degradation to which they could not 
condescend. The young men were rambling vagabonds, who roamed 
the country with a dog and gun, while the young girls were taw- 
dry slatterns, ill-dressed, flaunting creatures, to whom poverty never 
seemed to teach any useful lesson. Though their only chances of 
marriage were with men as poor and improvident as themselves, they 

* Thus wrote Arthur Young, about a century ago : " I must now come," he 
says, " to a class of persons to whose conduct it is almost entirely owing that the 
character of that nation has not that luster abroad which it will soon merit. This 
is the class of little country gentlemen, tenants who drink their claret by means of 
profit rents, jobbers in farms, bucks, your fellows with round hats edged with gold, 
who hunt in the day, get drunk in the evening, and fight the next morning. These 
are the men among whom drinking, wrangling, quarreling, fighting, ravishing, etc., 
are found as in their native soil." 

Sixty years back the evil was in but a small degree diminished. 



THE WOMEN OF IRELAND. 487 

could neither order a household thriftily nor cut out a gown, and 
were content to drag on lives of slatternly monotony, varied only by 
occasional visits to rich relations, or rather relations a degree or two 
further removed from poverty. 

We must turn to the novels of the period for the Master Jacks 
and Miss Biddys of this class : such social phenomena are now 
things of the past. In the works of all Irish writers are to be found 
portraits of the reckless Irish gentleman of sixty years ago. I may 
instance the " Castle Rackrent " of Maria Edgeworth as containing 
a well-drawn example of this improvident order. The hero in ques- 
tion is a true type of the gentry of the period, who were always in 
need of money, and whose fixed idea was that it must be had " any- 
how " — the anyhow implying that tenants were to be racked to the 
utmost, and loans raised as long as there was a scrap of security left 
to borrow on. The household was supplied in a hugger-mugger 
fashion ; as long as powder and shot could be obtained, there was 
generally some sort of flesh or fowl to help out the meal, while for 
the horses there was at any rate grass to be had. 

Are there many who recollect the taxes levied on tenants by the 
ladies of the landlords when a new lease or the renewal of an old 
lease was to be signed — taxes in the form of " duty fowls," " sealing 
money," and other names, were exacted ? The custom of propitiat- 
ing the dames was not so limited ; their claims were put in when- 
ever any transaction took place ; the choicest produce of the farm 
was generally considered their perquisite. The practice is now only 
a tradition. 

It is no fancy picture I draw of the gentry, and the families 
of the gentry, in old times — the class just above the squireens to 
whom I have been referring. They were in a great measure de- 
stroyed by the Encumbered Estates Bill,* and of the " old Irish 
gentleman " there are few specimens now remaining to recall a dis- 
mal picture in Irish history. 

In the above remarks, I have been referring exclusively to the 
families of "half-sirs" and "squireens," whose hereditary "rights" 
were poverty and pride, and considered any efforts at labor for self- 
maintenance only a degradation or a disgrace. It will be, I hope, 
sufficiently obvious that I in no degree refer to the Irish gentry, 
who command everywhere respect and admiration. 

And of the women of Ireland, who can say in praise too much ? 
I quote a passage I wrote in 1840 ; time has confirmed, rather than 
lessened, my conviction of its truth : 

* The Encumbered Estates Act was not in actual operation until 1850. Its 
effect has been to create a class which Ireland sadly wants — a middle class — a class 
between the aristocracy and the peasantry — by dividing large insolvent properties 
into comparatively small properties, the buyers and owners of which are in many 
cases Roman Catholics. 



4 88 EARLY MARRIAGES. 

" The women of Ireland — from the highest to the lowest — represent the 
national character better than the other sex. In the men, very often, energy 
degenerates into fierceness, generosity into reckless extravagance, social 
habits into dissipation, courage into profitless daring, confiding faith into 
slavish dependence, honor into captiousness, and religion into bigotry : for in 
no country in the world is the path so narrow that marks the boundary be- 
tween virtue and vice. But the Irishwomen have — taken in the mass — the 
lights without the shadows, the good without the bad : to use a familiar ex- 
pression, ' the wheat without the chaff.' Most faithful, most devoted, most 
pure, the best mothers, the best children, the best wives ; possessing pre- 
eminently the beauty and holiness of virtue in the limited or the extensive 
meaning of the phrase : they have been rightly described as ' holding an in- 
termediate space between the French and the English,' mingling the vivacity 
of the one with the stability of the other — with hearts more naturally toned 
than either. Never sacrificing delicacy, but entirely free from embarrassing 
reserve ; their gayety never inclining to levity ; their frankness never ap- 
proaching to freedom ; with reputations not the less securely protected be- 
cause of the absence of suspicion, and that the natural guardians of honor 
though present are unseen. Their information is without assumption ; their 
cultivation without parade ; their influence is never ostentatiously exhibited ; 
in no position of life do they assume an ungraceful or unbecoming independ- 
ence. The character is, indeed, essentially and emphatically feminine ; the 
Irishwoman is ' a very woman,' with high intellect and sound heart. 

" In writing of Irishwomen, I refer to no particular class or grade. From 
the most elevated to the most humble, they possess innate purity of thought, 
word, and deed ; and are certainly unsurpassed, if they are equaled, for the 
qualities of heart, mind, and temper which make the best companions, the 
safest counselors, the truest friends, and afford the surest securities for sweet 
and upright discharge of duties in all the relations of life." 

Such testimony is not due to Irishmen. I would, on this topic, 
rather than my own, give the testimony of Sir Emerson Tennant, 
M. P., an Irishman, who writes : 

" Thus it will be observed that the character of the Irishman is made up 
of extremes, and that his most conspicuous virtues border upon their neigh- 
boring vices. His patriotism is asserted by fits of riotous and extravagant 
fanaticism : his generosity runs into profusion, the brilliancy of his wit is oc- 
casionally tarnished by his devoting it to flattery, and the ardor of his friend- 
ship is too often the result of the influence of impulse." 

Akin to this topic — as being another proof of thriftlessness — is 
that of Early Marriages. They were fertile sources of over- 
population and its attendant miseries, of household discomfort and 
erribly restricted means. I refer more especially to the humbler 
classes.* 



* " A Killarney car-driver told me he married at sixteen : two pounds were col- 
lected for the priest, neither he nor his wife having a shilling beforehand. A 
waiter at the hotel at Kilkenny where I staid, I was told, had a collection of ,£18 
made at his wedding for the priest : and I have heard of instances among respect- 
able farmers of much more extravagant sums being thus given. Now is it human 
nature to suppose that any priest, depending for his livelihood on fees — the mar- 
riage fee among others — will not promote marriages ? I have heard of many in- 



SAVINGS BANKS. 



489 



It was no uncommon thing for the bachelor to borrow a friend's 
" dacent clothes " for use on the wedding day, to be returned the 
next morning ; and when the priest's dues were paid, and the whisky 
laid in for all comers (for that night at any rate), not a single shilling 
was left for housekeeping to begin the world with. 

I was present at a wedding where the bride, the bridegroom, the 
parents of both, and their neighbors, could not together make up the 
priest's fee of ten shillings ; he refused to marry them until it was 
paid ; * there was much "colloguing," and evidence of grave disap- 
pointment ; I went forward and made up the deficiency. 

Imprudent marriages are now comparatively rare ; yet I do not 
hear that there is any increase in the number of unwedded mothers. 

Although sixty years ago " abductions " were no longer carried 
out on the systematic and daring scale of half a century earlier, 
cases were by no means unfrequent, and were still barely regarded 
as crimes. Though every assizes contained records of trials for 
such offenses, and though the usual result was the handing over to 
the hangman of the leading culprit and one or two of his abettors, 
these Sabine weddings could not be wholly put down. Again and 
again, young girls would be torn from their homes and hurried up 
into the mountains, where some degraded hedge priest was always 
in waiting to make " the twain one." The unhappy bride had no 
choice but to submit, and when brought back to her parents gen- 
erally thought it better to consent to the marriage that had been 
forced on her than to lose caste and character. 

Savings Banks. — So long ago as fifty years, the Savings Bank 
was the cabin thatch — the inside of the thatch of course — and the 
purse that held the " Banker's Book " was usually an old stocking. 
The study of the tenant was to " make-believe " that he had no 
money at all ; his rent being always in arrear, outer mainifestations 
of poverty were essential to security. Now and then, when a lease 
was to be renewed, there were drawn from odd hiding-places num- 
bers of old guineas ; but as to savings that bore interest and so fruc- 
tified, such investments were never thought of. Concerning the 

stances of their doing so. I do not blame the priests, I blame the system. The 
priests must live ; they live by fees, for the state gives them nothing, and the best 
fee they get is at a wedding. Depend upon it, that as long as the priests are thus 
paid, early marriages, with all their attendant evils and mischiefs and miseries, will 
continue." — Campbell Foster, 1846. 

* Not long ago I heard a whimsical anecdote of a young couple similarly 
placed ; the refusal of the priest was to this effect : " Ye must beg, borrow, or steal 
the money before I marry you." So they retired. But, passing through the chapel 
yard, the young man chanced to see the priest's unmentionables drying on a hedge : 
he took them, pawned them, and returned to the chapel, paid the required amount, 
was married, and, when the ceremony was over, handed the priest the pawn-ticket, 
reminding his reverence he had told him he must either " beg, borrow, or steal," 
the required amount. 



490 



NEGLECTED LAND. 



change that has come over the spirit of Irish thrift since those days, 
it will suffice to quote a brief extract from Hancock's report for 
1875-6 as made public in the newspapers : 

" Last year the deposits increased to the extent of ^980,000, 
and in ten years the increase has amounted to ;£i 2,067,000. The 
aggregate of savings in the Joint Stock Banks, deposits in Savings 
Banks, and Indian Funds is now ^70,180,000. In the Joint Stock 
Banks there was an increase last year of ^1,785,000 and of ^14,- 
900,000 in ten years. In Post-Office Savings Banks the deposits in- 
creased ^70,000." 

Private banks were frightful evils in Ireland in the old days.* 
Sometimes, pound and thirty-shilling notes accumulated in the old 
stocking for years, to be drawn out at last and to prove of no value 
whatever — the bank having " broke." Few now living can recall 
the terrible sight of a wrathful and mournful crowd round a bank on 
some morning when the shutters were not taken down and the door 
remained unopened at mid-day. One such scene is in my mind's 
eye at this moment — that attending the stoppage of the Roches, in 
Cork, I think in 1818. I can see now the enraged men and moan- 
ing women who battered at the closed doors of the bank, holding in 
their hands bits of soiled paper ; and, with vain fury and horror- 
stricken looks, protesting against the robbery for which there was 
neither remedy nor relief. But Savings Banks ! — many years ago 
the Irish peasant would as much have thought of crossing a river by 
making a bridge of a rainbow. 

Neglected Land. — Sixty years ago, you might have walked a 
score of miles in some parts of the country, and over a hundred 
farms, such as they were, without encountering a plow or harrow : 
all the work of husbandry was done with the spade. And in what 
state was the land ? The dung-heap at the hall door supplied ma- 
nure for the " garden " ; but to get it for the fields was out of the 
question, except near the sea-side, where sand and sea-weed were 
easily obtained. There was no desire to reclaim and improve — the 
fatal characteristic of the Irishman at home. A disposition to let 
things remain as they were, illustrated by the common expressions, 
" Sure it 'ill do," " Sure it was always so," was in nothing more fatal 
than in the management of the land : every writer concerning Ire- 
land has commented on that disastrous fact. The certainty of ob- 
taining offers for any bit of land that was to be let, a score of appli- 
cants being always, not only ready but eager to outbid each other : 
the fatal proneness of landlords to close with the biggest offers, 
heedless as to the sort of tenants they were procuring, was the main 

* It was not uncommon for men who had saved money to pawn it and pay 
pawnbrokers' interest on the sum pledged. It was considered safer in the pawn- 
broker's hands than in their own, or in the keeping of frequently failing banks. 



LAND IN IRELAND. 



49 1 



source of evil. Once the land was secured, the single study of the 
tenant was to get the most he could out of it, without expending 
aught to enrich it.* 

Ireland — that more than any other country of the world depends 
on tillage — has more than any other country of the world neglected 
to practice it scientifically. No doubt agriculture has made great 
strides there of late years ; but even now, according to indisputable 
authorities, one half of the soil is left uncultivated ; while the other 
moiety does not produce half the crops that, by skill, capital, in- 
dustry, and science, it might be made to yield. For the land is 
still divided into what have been called " microscopic farms," and 
we find a score of acres often cut up into nearly as many lots, 
each portion being a separate holding ; so divided, f sometimes 
by leases often at will, partially planted ; a third of it perhaps 
covered with the pest of the Irish farmer, "the yalla boucklaun," 
while a cow picked up a scanty living from such grass as grew 
between these huge weeds that a boy would, in the spring, have 
eradicated for twopence. J Well might an English grazier, travel- 
ing in Ireland, exclaim, " Did you ever see a country so brutally 
used ?" 

* Many years ago I was standing beside Grogan Morgan, of Johnstown, Castle 
Wexford, when a man addressed him and asked for the lease of a certain farm. 
" I have no objection to you," was the answer, "if you offer me a fair rent for it." 
A few days afterward, I was walking with Grogan Morgan, when the same man 
came up and protested he had been ill used, another person having got the farm, 
although "his honor had given him (the man then present) a promise of it." " I 
made you no promise of the kind," said the landlord, " I told you I should have 
no objection to you if you offered me a fair rent for the farm. Your offer was con- 
siderably more than the offer of the person to whom I have given the lease. You 
did not offer me a fair rent, for you offered me more than the land was worth. 
Too much is as unfair a rent as too little. If you paid it and I took it, I should 
be a rogue and you would be a fool. Go home and think over this matter, there 
will be another farm vacant soon. If you become a tenant of mine you must make 
enough by your industry to live comfortably, have a sufficiency of good food, bring 
up your children respectably, and keep your land well manured and stocked, 
instead of draining it of all it is worth in a couple of years." I give this one ex- 
ample of a just landlord. 

f " Their farms," wrote a schoolmaster addressing the Lord Lieutenant, con- 
cerning poverty in Donegal, " are so small, that from four to ten of them can be 
harrowed in a day with one rake." And in the same county, when (in 1837) Lord 
George Hill bought an estate there, among eighty tenants on one of the properties, 
ten shillings annual rent was the highest rent paid by any one of them. It was by 
no means uncommon for a tenant to pay five pounds for that for which the head 
landlord received five shillings. There were whole districts in which the rents 
were so small as not to be worth the trouble and hazard of collecting. 

% It would seem that this evil still flourishes. I copy part of a letter published 
in The Times of a recent date. The writer makes mention of "the pest of the 
land called ragweed," which, like a cancer in the human breast, sucks the vital 
principle out of the land wherever it grows, and at maturity sends forth broadcast 
its millions of seeds. Every one I speak to on the subject acknowledges what a 
pest this weed is, but no one puts forth a hand to eradicate it. "What's the use," 



492 



IRISH FARMING. 



On this subject I may subjoin another extract : 

" Let any one look at the armies of docks and thistles, enough to seed a 
parish in every field he passes — even in the beloved potato gardens — and the 
matting of couch besides — which the farmer and wife and children look at 
with idle hands because such weeds are supposed to keep the crop warm." — 
Bence Jones on Ireland. 

Where were the sheep ? — nowhere. Yet there was fodder run- 
ning to waste on the slopes of every mountain on which flocks 
might have fed luxuriously. I traveled thirty miles through Conne- 
mara, the then recently alienated estate of Dick Martin, where the 
grass was sometimes up to my knees, and saw not only no flocks 
and herds, but not a solitary sheep or bullock turning into beef and 
mutton the wealth of food that nature had supplied. Let that most 
excellent landlord and estimable gentleman, Mr. Mitchell Henry, 
draw a picture of Kylemore as it is now. As for domestic fowls, 
what was the method pursued to prepare them for markets ? It was 
a universal practice periodically to pluck the geese and send them, 
bare of feathers, to the common, to roam over it and live as they 
could. The fowls were left to peck up anything they might find ; as 
to systematic feeding, that was never attempted. The ducks were 
better off ; they had always the manure-heap — the filthy pool at the 
cabin door. 

As with the land so with the sea : fish were there in plenty ; but 
the fisherman waited until they came to him instead of putting to sea 
in search of them. Sometimes a shoal would appear ; but before 
the nets were ready they were off, " bad luck to them " ; and it was 
seldom that it entered into the fisherman's mind to follow. Even 
when they were taken in large quantities there was no market at 
which they could be sold ; and, as to household preservation for 
household consumption, that was only one more of the many things 
in Ireland that might have been done but never were done. I have 
seen mackerel exposed for sale at a penny a score, and herrings for 
sixpence a hundred — there was no means of curing and preserving 
them. More than once I have seen the land manured with sprats. 
Fishermen, English or Scotch, came across the Channel, loaded 
their boats, returned home, salted their catch, and exported to Ire- 
land the very fish they had taken out of its own bays. I tested that 
fact in Galway — the finest fishing bay in the world, perhaps. I had 
ordered fish for dinner : two salt haddocks were brought to me. On 
inquiry, I ascertained where they were bought, and learned from the 
seller that he was the agent of a Scotch firm, whose boats were at 
that moment loading in the Bay. 

say they, " when the neighbors will let it grow thickly in hedge, ditch, and field, 
and seed our land again." "The other day I drove over some forty miles of road, 
and had the best opportunity of witnessing the enemy of the farmer, flaunting in 
immense abundance its rich golden-hued head of flowers right and left." 



MIDDLEMEN." 



493 



" Middlemen." — It is with almost a shudder I write of the Mid- 
dlemen of sixty years ago, so keenly do I recall the misery of which 
they were the cause. The term is hardly known to this generation, 
except as it occurs in Irish novels that deal with life in the Sister 
Isle as it was half a century back ; as a system, the system itself 
being no longer a curse to Ireland. 

My father had leased from Lord Audley some lands in which 
were veins of copper ore. His lease, however, only made him 
lord of the estate underground ; all the soil above was in the 
hands of a man named Swanton. This Swanton was what was 
termed a "squireen" (another name now obsolete) ; and, though 
he had himself sprung from the people, was totally without bowels 
of compassion for them. He let and underlet the estate in acres 
or half-acres, as might be ; and usually for twice or thrice the 
fair rent. It was impossible for the tenant to pay it and live 
comfortably or even decently ; there were always " arrears " ; they 
were neither asked for nor expected to be paid ; they could not 
be paid ; but their effect was to make the tenant the bond-slave 
of the middleman. His landlord the poor wretch had never seen. 
" My Lord " was an absentee whose interest in his Irish estate was 
confined to the regular receipt of a sum the middleman had agreed 
regularly to furnish to him ; so that the amount was raised the 
noble owner never inquired how. He left his representative to 
wring that sum, and as much over as might satisfy himself, out of 
the sweat and sinews of the tenants, and contented himself with 
regularly forestalling the time of payment by requests for " ad- 
vances." Swanton had but one unchangeable excuse for grinding 
down the wretched peasantry : " His lordship must have supplies. 
See his letter." I do not think Lord Audley had ever seen the 
barren tract of country he inherited from his ancestors — " forfeited 
estates," of course. 

No expenditure of a nature that might incur the hazard of his 
appearing to be in prosperous circumstances was ever thought of. 
Woe to the man who appeared in a new hat or coat, or whose wife 
boasted a decent gown ! It was as much a sign for the middleman 
to swoop down on him as the sight of a well-filled purse to a robber. 
True, the next installment of rent might not be due for months ; but 
there were always the " arrears." The money spent in buying gown 
or coat ought to have gone to lessening them. To my certain knowl- 
edge it has often occurred that, when a farmer contributed a respect- 
table sum toward the repairs of a chapel, the dangerous fact was 
kept a profound secret by the priest. 

I was once present when Swanton distrained for a very small 
sum. The " sticks " of furniture had been removed ; but there lay 
in a corner a little heap of potatoes. When the poor man saw these 
about to be taken away, he fell on his knees, held up his hands, and 
exclaimed, " Oh ! Mr. Swanton, for God's sake don't take the bit 



494 



TITHES. 



from the mouths of the childer ! " It was, however, taken and in 
my presence. I could tell other tales of the kind. Swanton ulti- 
mately died in his bed ; but he was seldom seen out of doors unac- 
companied by two armed men. Though but a boy then, I used to 
feel that I could scarcely have sought to turn aside the hand that 
aimed a murderous blow at him. 

I am not giving an exceptional instance. This man was the rep- 
resentative of a class — a large class. A great proportion of the 
landed property of Ireland was in the hands of middlemen — not a 
whit better or worse than the one I have pictured. 

Tithes. — I have elsewhere treated this subject, yet recur to it. 
There were always circumstances attending the collection of tithes 
that made the debt, the distraint, and the ruin, that frequently ac- 
companied the latter, exceptionally odious. The farmer or cotter 
knew that his own priest needed the money ; that he was living, at 
best, with restricted means, and sometimes in positive poverty. He 
knew, on the other hand, that the Protestant clergyman whose legal 
dues the tithes were, and in whose name they were collected, was 
rich in this world's goods ; sometimes a pluralist, and not unfre- 
quently an absentee, who lived comfortably in Cheltenham or Bath 
on money wrung from poverty-stricken creatures of another faith 
than his own. Even if he were resident, what did he give in return 
for the tithes so mercilessly extorted ? His flock might be counted 
by units, while the priest's numbered hundreds. Yet the peasant 
saw him dwelling in a mansion that was a palace in comparison with 
the wretched shelter that fell to the lot of the Catholic priest ; and 
riding a good horse, while the priest, when summoned to a distance 
to administer the rites of his church, had either to borrow a steed 
or trudge afoot. But bitterer than all to the Irish peasant was the 
thought that the law did him the double injustice of forcing him to 
pay for the good things that fell to the share of the Protestant cler- 
gyman, and of hindering him from ameliorating the lot of his own 
priest. No wonder that the collection of tithes in Ireland was a 
work of difficulty and danger. 

In the Ireland of to-day, the tithe-proctor is as much a memory 
of the past as is the Pillory. 

Under the rule of the middlemen it was worse than labor wasted 
for the holders of the miserable little farms to reclaim land. When 
some poor wretch had, with incredible toil, converted a waste piece 
of ground into soil that made an approach to fertility, all he had to 
look for, on the expiration of his lease, was to be charged with a 
largely increased rent in consideration of the land he had literally 
made, or else to be evicted from it and replaced by some stranger 
who had outbidden him. It is scarcely astonishing that ignorant 
and passionate men, when goaded by such cruel wrongs, often 
dipped their hands in the blood of the middlemen who turned them 



ABSENTEES. 495 

out of their holdings, or of the new tenants who leased their farms 
over their heads. 

Similar wrongs are now almost impossible, for not only has re- 
cent legislation labored to make them so, but public opinion is in- 
stantly and fiercely stirred up against any act of the kind — some- 
times too easily and too hotly — and its power is greater than that of 
any Act of Parliament to excite sympathy for the oppressed and de- 
testation of the oppressor. 

I am justified in classing evictions of the sort I have just de- 
scribed among the things that have all but passed away in Ireland. 

The cry is often raised that Ireland is over-populated. Under- 
cultivated would be a more fitting term. It was so even when the 
population was eight millions instead of five.* If the country had 
its millions of acres either not cultivated at all, or only half culti- 
vated, in every direction there were " lands wanting hands and hands 
wanting lands." On this vast farm, the peasantry, as it were, squat- 
ted, the bond-slaves of landlords and middlemen, and tilled in a 
makeshift way the acres their fathers had tilled before them, win- 
ning from the land the half or third of the harvest that skillfully-ap- 
plied industry would have made it yield. " Over-populated " meant, 
in the case of Ireland, that for every three human beings the land 
ought to have supported, it was barely made to furnish food for 
one. 

Absentees. — This famous Irish grievance is of such old standing 
that it was sought to provide a remedy for it five centuries ago. In 
the reign of Richard II, legislative enactments were made " to pre- 
vent gentlemen of estate and office from living abroad." I have 
seen a book — printed in 1729 — enumerating the "lords, gentlemen, 
and others who, having estates, employments, and pensions in Ire- 
land, spend the same abroad " ; and making also an estimate of the 
yearly sum thus drawn from Ireland as computed from data obtained 
in the months of May, June, and July of that year. But many 
Irish landowners may urge the plea that, if they lived on their Irish 
estates, they would be absentees from their English estates ; nay, 
there are " absentees " who actually dwell in Ireland ; I have known 
persons living in Kerry County who owned in Donegal land they 
had never seen.f 

* In 1841 the population of Ireland exceeded eight millions, by the Parliament- 
ary census it was 8,175,124. In 1851 it had fallen to 6,515,794 ; in 1861 it was 
5,764,543; in 1871 it was 5,402,755; and in 1881 it was 5,159,839. In 1882 it 
barely exceeds 5,000,000. In 1841 the population of Great Britain and Ireland 
was 26,707,065 ; and the public expenditure was ^49,285,396. In 1881 the popu- 
lation of Great Britain and Ireland was 34,852,495 ; and the public expenditure 
was ^83, 108,000. 

f The writer of a quaint book published in 1729 divides them into three classes. 
First, " those who live constantly abroad, and are seldom or never seen in Ire- 
land." Second, " those who live generally abroad, and visit Ireland now and then 



496 absentees. 

But the absentees were not always persons of wealth or rank ; 
the aristocracy of Irish intellect has also generally avoided the land 
of their nativity. Even Swift, in the zenith of the popularity his 
" Draper's Letters " had given him in Dublin, looked longingly to- 
ward a deanery in England, and vainly sought to obtain one. " Ire- 
land gave me birth," exclaimed the painter Barry, " but she would 
never have given me bread." The visits of Moore to Ireland were 
short and far between ; and Lady Morgan, though the brilliant cen- 
tral star amid a host of satellites in Dublin, had no sooner obtained 
a pension than she transferred herself for the remanider of her life 
to London. The list might be enlarged ! 

Absenteeism is still an evil ; but it is by no means now the evil 
it was sixty years ago, and for centuries before. During the reign of 
the first Edward, and later, during that of the eighth Harry, absen- 
teeism became a ground for such complaint that the defaulting land- 
owners were threatened with forfeiture. For the most part Anglo- 
Saxons and Anglo-Normans, these lords of lands, they had usually 
won by the sword, and held by the same title, got what they could 
out of their Irish estates, and were utterly indifferent to the means 
employed in getting it. All their desire was to spend in England 
the fruits of the toil of their miserable serfs, whose " four bones " 
created the wealth their conquerors squandered. I forget which of 
the " Ladies lieutenant " it was who said there was but one good pros- 
pect in Ireland — the west wind, for it usually blew toward England. 
Some of these very serfs were lineal descendants of former lords of 
the district, and might look from the summit of any adjacent moun- 
tain over lands spreading in all directions, east, south, north, and 
west, that had been the hereditary estates of their ancestors.* 

for a month or two." And third, " those who are occasionally absent, their num- 
bers being commonly the same, for if some come home others go abroad and sup- 
ply their places." 

He adds, " 'Tis melancholy to observe that now we are laboring under great 
disadvantages of trade and struggling with penury and want, the humor of living 
and spending abroad still increases among our men of quality and station." 

* During one of my journeys in wild Kerry, I spent a day at a poor shebeen- 
shop among the Carra mountains ; it was kept by a fine handsome young man 
named O'Sullivan. He could see, from the mountain-top, a hundred thousand 
acres, of which his forefathers had been the owners ; he was as truly, legitimately, 
and lineally their descendant as Lord Salisbury is a scion of the Norman Cecils. 
He knew it well, and all the " neighbors" knew it well. I forget who it is that 
tells a story of driving toward Macroon, when he heard "the keen," and asked 
what the cry was for. This was the answer of the car-driver : " Sir, the Prince is 
dead ! We heard the Banshee last night, and knew what it was for." The travel- 
ers found a large assembly of mourners gathered around a cabin door. It was 
" The O'Leary " who lay dead within. 

Walking in the neighborhood of Cork with a gentleman named Parker, he 
pointed out to me an aged laboring man hoeing a potato garden, and told me he 
was the lineal descendant of a family that had owned all the land between Monks- 
town and " the beautiful city," much of which had been to his (my informant's 
family) " assigned." 



THE ANCIENT OWNERS. 



497 



Very few of the old families hold estates, and some of them long 
ago accepted the religion of " the oppressor " ; for examples, the 
O'Kavanaghs of Carlow, the O'Neals of Antrim, and the O'Briens 
of Cork and Limerick. Not even for these " Irish " will Ireland be 
" reconquered and regained " : and, surely, not for the Bodkins 
and Blakes of Galway, the Herberts of Mucross, the Blackwoods of 
Clandeboye, the Whites of Bantry, the Chichesters of Donegal, the 
Browns of Kenmare, the Devereux and Percivals of Wexford, the 
Howards of Wicklow, and the Forbes of Granard.* 

It is recorded of a famous Irish chieftain who, riding by a castle 
and asking who lived there, was answered by a name that denoted 
English origin, and was told his family had been settled there for 
two centuries. " No matter," was his comment, " I hate the Saxon 
churl as if he came over but yesterday." As it was with the Norman 
conquerors, so it continued to be with the native chieftains, while 
any independent septs remained. So it had been from the earliest 
times. All that chronicle or fable preserves in connection with the 
ancient Irish kings is the record of the wars they made on one an- 
other.f 

The Irish are, perhaps, the most " homogeneous " people on the 
face of the globe ; no traveler can fail to observe the remarkable 
varieties that indicate descent through many channels — the Celt, the 
Dane, the Saxon, the Norwegian, the German, the Spaniard, the 
Norman, the Frenchman (after the repeal of the Edict of Nantes), 
the Scotchman, and the mere Englishman. Perhaps it would be 
difficult to find in all Ireland a score of pure-blooded Milesians. 

A Parliamentary return of 1870 supplies evidence that the evil 
of absenteeism is by no means what it was. More landowners reside 
on their properties than of old ; and even in the instances where 
landlord and tenant seldom or never see each other's faces, the fact 
is often productive of a blessing instead of a curse ; for the repre- 
sentatives appointed are of a far other type than the middlemen of 
old days ; and the Irish estates of many great absentee landlords — 

I knew a domestic servant who would cheerfully do any amount of in-door 
drudgery, but nothing could induce her to wash the hall-door steps. It was her 
habit to say that would be a degradation to the blood of the O'Briens. I found 
her boast that it flowed in her veins not unwarranted. 

I might multiply cases. There is no county, nor any barony of any county, in 
which there is not a peasant who expects to enter on possession of his forefathers' 
estates when they are wrested, by treaty or by force, from " the Saxon oppressor." 

* " Out and out, the best, the cleanliest, the most improved and improving of 
the people of Ireland are the people of Wexford ; there is seldom a cabin without 
a pig-sty attached to it, and if you meet a woman without shoes and stockings you 
may be sure she is a stranger. The people of Wexford are the descendants of the 
Anglo-Norman settlers : in customs and in language they preserve traits of their 
ancestors of six centuries ago." — " Ireland : its Scenery and Character." 

f " In the list of one hundred and seventy monarchs of the Milesian line, enu- 
merated by Irish historians, only forty-seven died natural deaths ; seventy-one 
were slain in battle, and sixty murdered." — Cooke Taylor. 
32 



498 ABSENTEES. 

as, for instance, the Duke of Devonshire and the Marquis of Lans- 
downe — are among the most liberally, and at the same time judi- 
ciously, managed in the island. 

But the fact must not be passed too lightly over, that many of 
those landlords who are still absentees are so because they dare not 
incur the hazards attendant upon residence. To seek one's own is 
still in Ireland a crime on the part of a landlord ; to prefer Donald 
to Patrick as a tenant, though Donald may be an honest, industrious 
man, and Patrick a lazy scoundrel, is a deadly crime. He who 
presses for overdue rent, or evicts a worthless tenant, is often forced 
to do so through an agent, simply because he knows that, if he were 
on the spot, action in defense of his rights would be taken at the 
peril of his life. 

Before closing this division let me once more repeat that the Irish 
agent of to-day is almost invariably a very different type of man 
from the middleman of the past. Where he is determined, as well 
as far-sighted, and courageous, as well as enterprising, he frequently 
accomplishes wonders, both for his employer and the tenantry — 
though the benefits done to the latter have, as a rule, to be forced 
on them in spite of themselves : often at risk of the benefactor's life. 
I may illustrate these remarks by quoting a passage from the " Re- 
alities of Irish Life," by Mr. Stuart Trench — a gentleman, who for 
years, literally carried his life in his hand, and, under Providence, 
preserved it only by the exercise of iron determination joined with 
sleepless vigilance. The writer is referring to the estate of an ab- 
sentee — Lord Digby — for which he was the agent : 

" When I recollect," says Mr. Trench, " the miserable condition of this 
estate not quite ten years ago, the tenants disaffected, industry paralyzed, 
Ribbonism rampant, and conspiracies to murder those who were most anx- 
ious for their welfare, filling the minds of many of the peasantry, it is some 
consolation to find that steady and persevering determination, combined- with 
kind and liberal treatment, will, even in much-abused Ireland, produce the 
most satisfactory results." 

I could from my own knowledge adduce many instances of es- 
tates similarly improved, and by similar means. In our work on 
Ireland we described at length a visit paid in 1842 to an estate in 
Donegal, managed for an absentee landlord by Colonel Pitt Ken- 
nedy. He had literally made the desert to blossom like a rose. 
The same happy results have since been achieved on numerous es- 
tates in Ireland, where the tenantry hardly know the actual owner 
of the land even by sight. 

What resident landlords are better landlords than the London 
Companies who purchased estates in the "bleak north" in 1613 
(which in 1883 they continue to hold) — when four "wise, grave, and 
discreet citizens " went to view the country they were to colonize, 
and reported that " it yielded store of all necessary for man's sus- 
tenance " — as it does to-day ? 



ABSENTEES. 



499 



The houses of the gentry in country parts exhibited the same 
carelessness of appearance — as did the cabins and dwellings of the 
"squireens." Nor did they, as in some countries, atone by elegance 
for the absence of the qualities that give ease and pleasantness to 
life. Gardens they had, through which you drove to the hall door ; 
but they were potato-gardens. Flower-gardens were seldom seen ; 
fruit-trees were scarce, and ornamental trees and shrubs scarcer. 
Verandas, or any exterior decoration, one never saw. Naturally 
the prevailing aspect of the Irish gentleman's mansion was that of 
bleak and bare discomfort. I regret to add that in some parts of 
Ireland these attributes of the old days linger still. 

I have given some gloomy pictures of the realities of Irish life in 
the early years of the century ; but I appeal to all who knew Ireland 
sixty years ago to say if the picture is overdrawn. Indeed, the most 
highly colored " pictures " would hardly exaggerate the deplorable 
aspect presented by the hovels and small houses of the country in 
the days of which I am writing. 

Certainly attempts were even then being made to effect a change, 
and introduce a better order of things, but for a long time with little 
or no effect. 

I could give many illustrations, but may content myself with one 
or two. In 1842, while a guest at Johnstown Castle in Wexford 
County, the seat of Grogan Morgan, I found his lady had built not 
only a healthful and well-lit school for the children of the ten- 
ants, but a row of comfortable cottages for the tenants themselves, 
in place of the miserable cabins they had previously inhabited. 
I was walking with her one day when a woman addressed her, 
asking some favor, which was refused. Out came instantly the 
woman's indignant comment : " And shure, my lady, is that the 
thanks I'm to get for making the children go to school and wear 
shoes to plaze ye ? " On another occasion I entered with her one 
of the neat slated cottages. We actually found a man thrashing 
corn in the parlor, and as the ceiling was not lofty enough for 
him to use his flail, he had dug a hole in the floor, in which he was 
standing, and so was busy at work. I knew a gentleman who 
imported a number of smock-frocks, as at once cheap, conven- 
ient, cleanly, and pleasant to wear. Not a peasant could be 
tempted to put on one of them, and they were converted into 
dusters, but even then enjoyed pretty much of a sinecure. There 
was a village in which a considerate builder had appended to 
each cottage a small but convenient out-building. So universal 
was the ridicule to which he was subjected, in consequence, that 
he found it expedient to take all the conveniences down. It 
was nearly the same with those landlords who erected pig-sties ; the 
tenant could not be persuaded to submit his pig to durance vile with- 
in four walls. It would be easy to enlarge upon this topic. There 
is no person who has had experience of Ireland of the long ago who 



500 



IRISH INNS. 



will not testify to the exceeding difficulty, almost impossibility, of 
effecting beneficial changes in the habits of the Irish " people." 

I rejoice to record a recent testimony, that of the estimable (late) 
Knight of Kerry, to the effect that, at all events, things are very far 
from being what they were,* and that, if legal compulsion was found 
the only means of providing accommodation for the pig, of white- 
washing the cabin, and removing the dung-heap from the hall-door, 
other degradations, " sanctified by time," have been voluntarily done 
away with. Though there remains much to grieve the philanthro- 
pist, and make the political economist angry, there is much to glad- 
den and render hopeful those who can compare the Ireland of the 
present with the Ireland of the past. 

Of the Inns of Ireland fifty years ago, what shall I say ? In 
country places even now they may not be all the English traveler 
desires and expects ; but in frequented parts, and especially along 
the lines of railways, they are quite as good as they are in England. 
All through the country, even the humblest of existing Irish inns are 
great improvements on the wretched accommodation of days long 
past. 

I slept in Connemara, at an " hotel " where some boards, placed 
across, from wall to wall, separated the ground-floor from the first 
floor ; that was in 1843. Immediately underneath me were a cow, 
a litter of pigs, and a number of fowls. About daybreak, when 
weariness had at last induced sleep, a rattle at the door aroused me, 
and, on inquiring what was the matter, I was informed that the priest, 
having been summoned in haste, wanted his vestments, which were 
locked up in a closet in my chamber, f 

And the Irish inn-waiters of old times, they exist no longer ; the 
inns are hotels ; the waiter is at least as well dressed as the landlord, 

* I rejoice to have this opportunity of testifying to their wonderful general ad- 
vance, within the last few years, in material prosperity, in practical intelligence, 
and above all, in independence of mind. That independence often exhibits itself 
in ways very little agreeable to the landlord. It even occasionally runs full tilt 
against the clergy of their own faith. Such ebullitions are almost inevitable in the 
exercise of a newly-acquired faculty, but he must be a very sorry and short-sighted 
patriot who would wish for a retrograde action on this account, or desire to see a 
return to the miserable state of subserviency in which they once were, whether in 
relation to the priest or to the landlord. 

\ " The look of the inn was most unpromising. A pile of lime and sand for 
building a wall adjoining blocked up the doorway, but a bright peat-fire and a 
boarded and sanded floor — a luxury not to be met with everywhere in Ireland — 
made me hope for a comfortable rest. The brightness of the fire gilded over the 
discomfort of the room. It was perfectly Irish. Two large and apparently much- 
frequented rat-holes showed no want of company of that kind. The table was 
propped ; its cover torn and dirty ; one of the windows had before it a broken 
looking-glass to dress by, a corner of which still remained in the frame ; the white- 
washed walls were marked round with candle-smokes, where candles had been stuck 
with their own tallow, and two beds at one side of the room had a. most unpromis- 
ing appearance." — Foster* s ''''Ireland" 



IRISH CAR-DRIVERS. 



50I 



wears a white " choker," receives your orders and executes them, 
but with no word of greeting, no smile of welcome, no sentence of 
advice asked or unasked ; no joke, no fun, no question ; you come 
and go ; he takes no note ; " service " is charged for in the bill. The 
most original of the race I ever knew was Charley, at the Victoria 
Hotel, Killarney. He was a natural wit, and had always some- 
thing to say that raised a laugh ; but he was prompt and ready at 
call, and his bow might have been studied at Court during the 
Regency. 

How altered are the ways of the Irish car-driver of to-day from 
those of his father and grandfather ! They were pleasant fellows, 
the drivers of forty and fifty years ago — always pleasant in the 
country, and commonly so in the towns — full of wit, attentive and 
obliging, and though poor to the extent of raggedness, ever rich in 
repartee. Rags are no longer the badges of the car-driving frater- 
nity ; but in putting on decent clothes they have put off much of 
their humor, and more of their courtesy, and I can not say that 
in these respects the race has improved, although in all other ways it 
has. Perhaps I could select nothing that to me so strongly indicates 
the improved condition of Ireland, as the contrast of the neat and 
well-kept cars of to-day with the jaunting-car of the past. Years 
ago, whenever a lady was compelled to use one of them, the precau- 
tion was seldom omitted of spreading her pocket-handkerchief on the 
seat, which was invariably dirty, and often greasy. To wash the 
wheels and body was considered a work of supererogation. The 
horse was generally a used-up animal that it was cruelty to drive ; 
the driver was always in rags ; his caubeen was proverbial as an illus- 
tration of Irish head-gear, and the harness was generally a mixture of 
rope and leather straps. Such was the Irish car-driver fifty, forty — 
even thirty years ago.* 

The honesty of the race was proverbial ; indeed, honesty was 
everywhere, at all times, one of the admirable features of Irish char- 
acter. [I may note here that during all my traveling in Ireland — 
sometimes in very queer places indeed — I never lost by theft the 

* But the old race of car-drivers is nearly gone now. It went out with the 
whisky, and has not come back with its return. The drivers are now short in their 
answers, and seem as if they thought the person who seeks to stimulate conversa- 
tion has some offensive motive for what he is doing. I doubt if a traveler who 
journeys from the Giant's Causeway to Cape Clear will pick up a dozen anecdotes 
from that source worth telling again ; while half a century ago it would have been 
a barren harvest that did not yield a dozen in a day. I may give two samples of 
the yield of former times. A driver was wrapping himself in a thick great-coat be- 
cause the heavens gave some threat of a storm. " You seem to take good care of 
yourself, my friend." said his fare. " To be sure I do, yer honor ; what's all the 
world to a man when his wife's a widdy?" " I'll not give you anything," said a 
gentleman to a driver, " but I'll lend you a shilling." " Ah, thin, may yer honor 
live till I pay ye," was the answer. 



502 



" THE BIT OF LAND." 



value of a shilling, though I rarely locked my portmanteau, and never 
my chamber-door.] * 

Will any one, whose acquaintance with Ireland dates a quarter of 
a century back, imagine such things as " cabmen's shelters " in Dub- 
lin streets ? and not in that city only. If he desires to realize a still 
wilder dream, will he fancy street fountains, at which any passer-by 
may take " a sup " that costs nothing ? These and their like may be 
minor matters : but they are sure and certain indications of progress 
— of the " march of intellect " that has brought Ireland nearer to 
England than even the huge steamships that make the voyage from 
one island to the other a mere pleasure-trip — easier than, and almost 
as quick as, used to be the car-drive from Merrion Square to Dun- 
leary. 

" The Bit of Land." — One of the most important and valuable 
of the results of increased means of obtaining employment, created 
by the opening-up of the natural resources of the country, is that 
land is not so eagerly coveted and competed for as it was in days 
gone by. It would be difficult for an Englishman to understand the 
eagerness with which the Irishman of fifty years ago coveted " the 
bit of land." It was to him a necessary of life ; for without it how 
was he to obtain the scanty supply of potatoes — his only food, and 
the food of his family ? 

I have described how " the land was let and underlet, and un- 
derlet again, till six rents had sometimes to be provided by the 
actual cultivator before he was allowed to feed himself and family." 

Thomas Campbell Foster, Q. C, the Times Commissioner in 1845, 
gives a list of alleged causes of Irish " degradation, misery, and con- 
sequent outrages." He adds one to which he attributes all, or nearly 
all, the evils of Ireland — " want of employment." That was, indeed, 
a national curse in 1845 ; it is no longer so in 1883. There are now 
in Ireland as few persons able and willing to work who have little or 
no work to do as there are in England. \ 

In considering the melancholy history of Irish crime, all, or 
nearly all, agrarian outrages are found to be traceable to disputes 
concerning the bit of land." Forty or sixty years ago the reten- 
tion of his little holding was a life-and-death matter to the occupier. 

* It is not out of place here to state that I was never but once injured or in- 
sulted : that once was when I was seated on a "low-backed car," with Mr. Isaac 
Butt, M. P., who in the midst of a mob refused to shout for O'Connell and Repeal. 
I was in his company and shared the beating that followed on his refusal, from the 
effects of which I did not recover for a week. 

f In 1845 when the Times Commissioner wrote, the average wage, except 
during harvest-time, was eightpence a day, and it was rarely that employment 
at that rate was obtained for more than six months of the twelve. I have else- 
where stated that at Ballydehob, early in the century, my father employed in 
working one of his mines between four and five hundred men, women, and chil- 
dren ; the wage of a man was fivepence a day. 



IRISH MATERIAL. 503 

In England a tenant who was unable or unwilling to pay his rent 
could, at least, become a day-laborer ; in Ireland labor was so little 
sought for and so wretchedly paid that eviction meant in general to 
the wretched tenant the exchange of insufficient food for absolute 
starvation. " Death by hunger " — such was the sentence he saw 
pronounced on his family and himself, and in madness he turned to 
seek revenge on all who had been concerned in uttering it. 

" You take his life, 
When you do take the means whereby he lives," 

reasoned Mr. Blackburne, Attorney-General for Ireland about 1840, 
in discussing this subject. He added, " Land is to the Irish peasant 
a necessary of life, the alternative being starvation." 

Turned out on the world to starve, the evicted tenant readily 
lent an ear to the suggestion that " the State was not his friend, nor 
the State's law," and that, as he had nothing to hope for in that 
direction, to take vengeance on those who had reduced him to utter 
misery would be but an act of wild justice. It is well known that 
the form such revenge commonly assumed, and continues to assume, 
was the murder of the man who dared to take a holding from which 
the previous occupier had been evicted. 

Out of this dark phase of Irish character has grown much of the 
prejudice that still, to some extent, prevails in England against the 
Irish people. Unhappily, in spite of the disappearance of the race 
of middlemen, the immense extension of means of obtaining a living 
apart from the cultivation of the land, and the most sweeping re- 
forms of the land laws, agrarian crime is still the darkest blot on the 
fair fame of Ireland. Why it should be so let those pests and curses 
of the country — secret societies — answer. The Irish peasant is no 
longer the crushed serf of sixty years ago. Eviction and starvation 
are no longer synonymous terms in Ireland. Yet the hand of the 
assassin is still as readily lifted as in the days when an impartial 
observer, while lamenting and abhorring the deed, could not but 
lament and abhor also the cruel provocation that had led to it. Bad 
though the excuse may have been for the agrarian crimes of 1822 — 
it is wholly wanting in the case of the horrible and dastardly murders 
of 1882. One is inclined to take a gloomy view of the future of 
Ireland when the fact is made so terribly apparent that, although 
almost every provocation that could goad the Irish peasant into 
crime has been removed, the old readiness to shed blood is still so 
prominent and hideous a feature of his character. 

The most hopeful direction in which efforts for the benefit of 
Ireland can be made is that of the development of her natural 
resources and advantages. With seas swarming with fish, harbors 
that are among the safest and most capacious of the world, water- 
power everywhere abundant, and the mineral riches of the country 



504 



IRISH MANUFACTURES. 



at once varied and extensive, the wonder is that, instead of being 
one of the poorest, Ireland is not the richest country on earth. 

The failure of schemes for working mines in Ireland to repay 
their projectors has generally been traceable to one of two causes — 
bad management or insufficiency of capital, and sometimes to the 
two combined. Of the more precious metals, Ireland will probably 
never again yield enough to repay the expenses of obtaining them, 
though her ancient legends, confirmed by the abundance of orna- 
ments that have been dug up at various times, would seem to point 
to a period when the yield of native gold and silver was consider- 
able ; * but in copper, lead, sulphur, and marble various districts are 
rich, and greater rewards than have already been obtained probably 
await those who shall in the future bring capital, skill, and energy to 
the working of these deposits. \ 

Surely the most casual looker-on, no less than those who go 
deeply into the matter, can not fail to see that Ireland needs nothing 
but tranquillity, freedom from the fatal thrall of agitation, and the 
consequent inflow of capital, to become a manufacturing country, 
as well as " a country of raw material." The failures, and they have 
not been many, bring conviction that failures they would not have 
been if they had not, so to speak, been willful failures. Certain " in- 
dustries " in the north have been successes. In Belfast several 
flourish. Irish linen maintains its supremacy in all the markets of 
the world. It may be a comparatively small matter, but it is, at 
least, evidence of what may be — that Marcus Ward has established 
a trade in art paper-work, perhaps more extensive, certainly more 
meritorious, than that of any other country in Europe ; and in Fer- 
managh County there is an art pottery that long ago entered into 

* In our work " Ireland," etc., we fully described our visit to the Wicklow gold- 
mines, where we saw the bits of native gold taken from the gravel and sub-soil. 
The mine was worked, indeed, but did not pay for the labor of working it : yet 
that gold, native gold, is there is certain ; although the lines of Moore are verified: 
" Has love to that soul, so tender, 
Been like our Lagenian mine, 
Where sparkles of golden splendor 

All over the surface shine ; 
But if in pursuit we go deeper, 

Allured by the gleam that shone, 
Ah ! false as the dream of the sleeper, 
Like Love, the bright ore is gone." 
\ The estuaries of several Irish rivers have long been celebrated for yielding 
pearls. These are sometimes of great purity and very respectable size. So far 
back as i638, Sir Robert Reading reported to the Royal Society that he had seen 
a pearl found in the Bann that weighed thirty-six carats ; and though the yield 
is now much less considerable than formerly, pearls continue to be found. Mrs. 
Hall had one of large size and much purity that came from the River Slaney. 
Perhaps a reason for the decay of Irish pearl-fisheries may be found in the fact 
that the fishing has only been carried on in shallow water ; whereas, if the experi- 
ence of pearl-collecting in other parts of the world may be taken as a guide, it is 
in deep waters that the best pearls generally lie. 



TITHES. 



50S 



competition with the best of either Staffordshire or Worcester.* I 
am aware I write of comparative trifles, but the national produce of 
Ireland is a powerful aid to make the small the great and to remove 
that ever-fatal bar to progress, the total and entire dependence for 
employment of the people on labor of the hands with which the 
brain has nothing to do. 

Of this vitally important subject I am merely skimming the sur- 
face ; it is for those who are better able than I am to bring it fully 
before a willingly-listening public. 

Tithes. — With this subject, always odious and unbearable, I have 
sufficiently dealt as one of the prominent evils of the older time, but 
which came continually under the consideration of all who gave 
thought to Ireland fifty years ago. Tithes are now as thoroughly 
forgotten as any other relics of the penal laws. The long dominant 
Church was disestablished in 1869, but several years previously, 
tithe payments had ceased to exist in the old oppressive form. It 
is, however, impossible to treat of Ireland toward the close of the 
nineteenth century without adverting to the impost by which the 
Church clergyman was sustained, when the Roman Catholic priest 
of the parish was living in miserable and degraded poverty in the 
midst of the flock, the fatness of whose land fed the clergyman by 
law established. I believe the Protestant clergy at least as thor- 
oughly rejoiced as did the Roman Catholic priests when that evil im- 
post was removed from Ireland, and ceased to be a sign of serfdom. f 

I for one do not consider the abolition of the Irish Church by 
any means entirely a good for Ireland. Whatever they may have 
been in long ago times, of late years the clergyman was often, I will 

* It is some years ago since I visited the pottery at Belleek, in the County of 
Fermanagh, not far from beautiful Lough Erne. I engraved many of its art 
productions in the Art Journal. It was then, as it continues to be, a struggling 
concern ; its main difficulty insufficient capital, but of its capabilities there was 
not then, and there is not now, any doubt. The manager, and I believe principal 
proprietor (but it is in the hands of a company) is Mr. R. W. Armstrong, a gentle- 
man of great intelligence, much judgment and taste ; and sound practical knowl- 
edge and experience. The productions of the works are by no means limited to 
art utilities — things for daily use : although these have been subjected to marked 
improvement. The household pottery is certainly as well decorated and as good 
as any made in Staffordshire. Its issues of high-class works are of admirable 
character, exhibiting originality of conception, refined manipulation, beautiful in 
form and in color. Is there in Ireland no patriotic capitalist who will invest 
capital there, so that while promoting and extending the interests of his country, 
he may enrich himself? For sure I am that a few judicious changes at Belleek 
would make that manufactory of pottery one of the most flourishing establishments 
in the kingdom. 

f " At the Quarter Sessions at Gort one tithe proctor processed eleven hundred 
persons at Gort for tithe. They were all of the lower order of farmer or peasant. 
The expense of each process was about 8j." — From the Galway Advertiser, Octo- 
ber 18, 1822. 



506 THE OLD SCHOOLS. 

say almost universally, a boon and blessing to the parish in which he 
was located. His wife was generally its " Lady Bountiful," to whom 
the peasant applied in all ailments with a certainty of obtaining gra- 
tuitous relief, the nearest dispensary being perhaps a dozen miles 
off. His few school-children were models of well-clad cleanliness 
that became examples ; of his little he was ever ready to give a lit- 
tle ; the beggar seldom shunned his door ; he was in a word the only 
" respectability " in his neighborhood, the only person in whose in- 
tegrity the people had confidence. It was notorious that whenever 
remittances came from emigrants — gifts to relatives at home — it was 
to the clergyman, and not to the priest, they were sent. It was 
known and felt that with the one -they would be safe and sure, 
while if transmitted through the other a host of accumulated 
" dues " would have to be deducted before delivery. For aught I 
know, the practice may be in operation a. d. 1883, as it certainly 
was during the earlier half of the century. 

Duels. — With the subject of dueling I have dealt elsewhere. I 
refer to it here as exemplifying one of the many changes wrought by 
time in Ireland. Many years have passed since a duel was fought 
on Irish ground. He who sent or accepted a challenge now would 
not be the pride and glory, but the shame and scorn, of his country- 
men and countrywomen of all grades, from the highest to the lowest. 

The Old Schools and their Teachers. — Sixty years ago in 
" country parts " the only schools for educating the children of the 
peasant were " Hedge Schools." Whether the locality and the name 
were due to the fact that not very long before, it had been penal in 
Roman Catholic priests to teach at all — and so they taught out-of- 
doors " on the sly " — or whether because in consequence of the 
dense atmosphere of the cabin that was the school-house, the lessons 
were for the most part learned under a hedge, I can not say, but cer- 
tainly the whereabouts of a dominie was always indicated by groups 
with their slates or worn " Goughs " (arithmetics) gathered under the 
shelter of hedges, or, as they were generally called, " ditches." 

The humbler Irish have been always eager in the pursuit of 
knowledge, and a peasant must have been brought very low indeed 
if he failed to send his children to a school, although often it was 
distant four or five miles from his dwelling. 

The master was usually a low, pretentious, ignorant, and evil 
man, not unfrequently the leading member of a secret society, and 
under his roof most of the seditious plots were concocted. He 
was paid usually in " kind," money being rarely at command. Sods 
of turf, pieces of bacon, occasionally a fowl, and when a pig was 
killed, part of him — were the coin in which decenter farmers paid 
the school bills. The master was almost invariably a drunkard, the 
presiding spirit of the shebeen-shop (the pot-house), and exercised 



THE HEDGE-SCHOOLS. 



507 



merciless and brutal sway over the girls and boys he " taught." 
Books for study there were few or none ; those for entertainment 
and consequent " instruction " were the lives of rogues and rappa- 
rees — " Redmond the Horse-stealer," " Freney the Robber," and so 
forth : with books even more pernicious, such as not only made vice 
appear laudable, but inculcated bigotry, intolerance, and hatred of 
neighbors as sacred duties. The Protestant was execrated as at once 
the personal and national enemy of the Catholic. I can write noth- 
ing concerning hedge-schools so strong as that which was written by 
an Irishman, Carleton, who knew such schools well, and had been 
educated in them.* 

Other educational influences were at work, but they were Protes- 
tant in character, and equally tainted by bigotry and intolerance with 
the Catholic hedge-schools. Consequently the peasantry looked on 
them with aversion : few would consent to send their children to 
schools where they were reared in an alien faith. 

Mr. Froude writes : 

" From the beginning of the eighteenth century, and perhaps earlier, char- 
ity day-schools had been scattered about by the exertions of individuals, where 
the children of the peasantry had been taught the catechism, and had received 
some kind of industrial training. In 17 10 there were thirty of these schools, 
where seven hundred boys and girls who would consent to become Protes- 
tants were being taught to read and write, to cultivate the ground, to grow 
hemp and flax, and spin, and knit, and sew. In 1719 an educational associa- 
tion had been formed, one hundred and thirty of these day-schools had been 
established and the number of children receiving education was 3,000." 

I can picture the hedge-school from personal knowledge. I was 
a " pupil " in one of them. During our residence at Glandore, a vil- 
lage distant a few miles from Ross-Carberry, my father was anxious 
that we should be learning something, or, at least, should not quite 
forget what we had learned ; and sent my younger brother and my- 
self to a famous " philomath " in the neighborhood. As young gen- 
tlemen, we were of course subjected to no rough treatment, did ex- 
actly what we pleased, taking a " spell " at the Latin grammar now 
and then, but usually rambling the fields or " mitching " altogether, 
and had more often a rude fishing-rod than a " Gough " in our young 
hands. The evil influences of the " scholastic establishment " we 
could not then perceive. I may, on that head, safely accept the tes- 
timony of Carleton ; but I well remember the miserable cabin, the 

* " Their (the pupils') education, indeed, was truly barbarous : they were 
trained and matriculated to cruelty, revenge, and personal hatred in these schools ; 
knowledge was directed to evil purposes, disloyal principles were industriously in- 
sinuated into their minds by their teachers, most of whom were leaders of illegal 
associations. The matter placed in their hands was of a most inflammatory and 
pernicious nature, as regarded politics ; and as far as religion and morality were 
concerned, nothing could be more gross and superstitious than the books which cir- 
culated among them." — "The Hedge School," Carleton. 



508 POOR SCHOLARS. 

atmosphere of smoke, the ragged boys under the hedges, and the dis- 
sipated master who was preparing them for the battle of life. The 
darkest picture I could draw of the scene, and its several accessories 
would not be overdrawn.* 

There were, however, some happy exceptions to the general char- 
acter of the hedge-schoolmaster — such exceptions as Mrs. Hall has 
drawn in her sketch of " Master Ben," the schoolmaster at Bannow, 
in Wexford County. 

At all periods of the history of the Irish peasant there was a 
desire amounting to craving for the acquisition of knowledge. The 
poor scholar is not a fancy sketch ; I remember him in the West, 
when we resided in West Cork, almost a daily passer-by, sometimes 
a visitor, and not unfrequently an invited guest, from whom it was 
pleasant to hear news of the world he was traversing, the world being 
to him the high-road from one end of the country to the other. The 
poor scholar was always a Latin and sometimes a Greek scholar ; 
but of useful knowledge he had only a bare smattering, and it was 
rarely with any result he was consulted on any subject. I do not 
know how it is now, when a " boy " of this caliber can find his way 
into the Roman Catholic University. I believe it was a very rare 
thing indeed to find that a " poor scholar " had become a mechanic 
or settled down to any reputable trade. 

You may journey far and wide through Ireland without finding 
a hedge-school now ; but you will scarcely travel a dozen miles in 
any party of the country without coming upon one of the National 
Schools that have replaced them. When the enlightened policy that 
permitted the children of Roman Catholic parents to be taught in 
State-supported schools without seeking to make proselytes, was first 
inaugurated, the Protestant population of Ireland raised a great out- 
cry against the scheme. " Better," said one clergyman, who did but 
express the sentiments of many others, both lay and clerical, " better 
that the Government should leave the Irish children ignorant than 
bring them up papists." 

Although the National Schools of Ireland have been brought 
more completely under the control of the priesthood than was the 
intention of the Legislature, great good has resulted from their estab- 
lishment. Only in the wildest parts of the country is it at all com- 
mon now to find a peasant who can not both read and write. Sixty 
years ago the X-mark was affixed to nineteen out of twenty of the 
leases or other documents that required the signatures of peasants. 

In those days, English was a language as foreign to the majority 

* I quote another passage from Carleton : " When we consider the total ab- 
sence of all moral and religious principles in those establishments, and the positive 
presence of all that was wicked and immoral, need we be surprised that occasional 
crimes of a dark and cruel character should be perpetrated ? " The truth is that it 
is difficult to determine whether unlettered ignorance itself were not preferable to 
the kind of education which the people there received. 



THE NATIONAL SCHOOLS. 509 

of the peasantry as French or German. When you landed in Ire- 
land it was by no means unlikely that the porter who came to take 
your luggage from the boat to the inn could speak no word of Eng- 
lish. If you chanced to land at any out-of-the-way port, that diffi- 
culty was almost sure to be in your way. When a lad, the ship in 
which I was a passenger struck on a rock in the harbor of Kinsale. 
I can well remember the despair of the captain when he ascertained 
that among the boat's crew that came alongside to render assistance 
there was not one man who could understand a word of English. 
Now, probably, there are not two in a hundred " natives " who are 
entirely ignorant of the Anglo-Saxon tongue. In fact, Irish is rarely 
heard, even in the cabins in remote districts.* 

We have the authority of Mr. Sullivan for the assertion, that there 
is now scarcely a farm-house or working-man's home in all the land 
in which the boy or girl of fifteen, or the young man or woman of 
twenty and upward, can not read the newspaper to the old people 
and transact their correspondence. 

There are now in Ireland more than seven thousand National 
Schools, with above a million of enrolled pupils. " The coming race " 
will very rarely have to make their marks instead of writing their 
names. f 

How very, very different it was fifty or sixty years ago, when, ex- 
cepting the priest and the schoolmaster, when there happened to be 

* At the Social Science Congress in 1881, Lord O'Hagan thus said : " I can not 
refrain from giving a few figures which tell a marvelous tale of twenty years' en- 
deavor and success. In i860, the schools of the Board were 5,632 ; in 1880, they 
were 7,590 ; in i860, the pupils on its rolls were 804,000; in 1880, they were 1,083, 
020 ; in i860, the children in average attendance were 262,823 I m 1880, they were 
468,557 ; and the Parliamentary grant, which in i860 was ,£284,468, was in 1880, 
,£722,366. These figures exhibit the information obtained in 1861 as to i860, and 
the information obtained in 1881 as to 1880. They need no comment, and are, in 
themselves, happily demonstrative of a great increase in the means of primary 
public instruction and the number of those availing themselves of it ; notwithstand- 
ing that, in the mean time, there has been no corresponding advance in the amount 
of the population of Ireland. The apparatus of teaching has been ample and effect- 
ive." 

In the year 1840, the total number of persons over fifty years old in Ireland 
unable to read or write was over three millions, or fifty-three per cent of the entire 
population; but in ten years the percentage had fallen to forty-seven. In 1861 it 
was only thirty-nine per cent, and in another ten years it had been reduced to 
thirty-three per cent. There was an increase of over twenty per cent between 1841 
and 1871 in the number of those who could both read and write, a similar large 
increase in the number of those who could read only or write only. 

The Irish-speaking population numbered in 1861 over 1,100,000, over 940,000 
being able to speak both English and Irish ; but in ten years afterward the number 
had fallen to 817,875 and 714,313, so that in 1871 only 103,562 people in the coun- 
try spoke Irish only, a decrease of 60,000 in the "ten years. 

f To buy a book, or stationery, except in the larger towns, was an impossibility 
a few years ago ; now at every railway-station there is a book-stall, where there is 
an ample supply of both ; a most beneficial system, introduced and sustained by 
one who has been in that way a public benefactor — William Henry Smith. 



5 io DOMESTIC QUARRELS. 

one, it was hard to find in a whole parish a single person who could 
write a letter, or even read a printed book ! 

I have referred to the schools scattered through the country in 
old days, where the chief object pursued was to bring up as Protes- 
tants the children who attended them. These were the Charter 
Schools, incorporated by Act of the Irish Parliament in 1733. So 
avowedly were these establishments machines for the manufacture 
of proselytes, that not only were they described at the time of their 
incorporation as designed to teach " the poor Irish " the English lan- 
guage and Protestant religion, but at a later date it was resolved, 
while the scholars continued to be brought up in the Protestant faith, 
"not to admit any but the children of Papists into the schools." 

Language can hardly do justice to the intensity of the abhorrence 
with which the charter schools were regarded by the mass of the 
Irish people. " Few Catholics," said a writer on Ireland early in 
this century, " pass by these schools without looking on them with a 
jealous eye, and venting their feelings by curses and execrations, 
with gestures and emphasis which bespeak their heartfelt anguish." 
Protestant landlords refused to allot ground for the erection of 
schools, and from this refusal, and the exertions of the priesthood, it 
ensued that in most parts of Ireland the National Schoolhouse was 
made an appendage to the Roman Catholic chapel — the chapel-yard 
being the only ground that could be readily obtained. Still, with all 
their internal evils, and the detestation in which they were held by 
the Catholic Irish, the charter schools continued to the last to obtain 
pupils, for they held out powerful temptations to the baser feelings 
of human nature in the fact that they took both day-pupils and 
boarders, educated them all gratis, and lodged, fed, clothed, and 
apprenticed the boarders at a similar easy rate. 

The children were, for the most part, either the offspring of vice, 
or of parents too degraded to care for the reproach that the fact of 
having attended these schools would attach to their children's 
names. Commonly, indeed, such immature " renegades " returned, 
as soon as they quitted the school, to the creed they were supposed 
to be converted from ; or, if they continued Protestants, afforded 
examples by their lives at which Catholic fingers might point with 
scorn and loathing. 

Domestic Quarrels. — It is a very fertile theme I have to deal 
with here. Mr. A. M. Sullivan hit the nail on the head when he wrote 
concerning the earlier Irish contests, " The Irish chiefs may be said 
to have fought each other with one hand, while they fought the Eng- 
lish with the other." What the Irish chiefs did so long ago is pre- 
cisely what the leaders of the Home Rule party are doing now. 

Let us go back so long ago as the year 1661, when the then 
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, the Duke of Ormond, was accused of 
favoring Papists by permitting them to hold a public meeting in 



DOMESTIC QUARRELS. 5 H 

Dublin, he indignantly repelled as a calumny, the accusation that he 
in any way favored them ; but admitted that he gave them leave to 
meet, "because" said he, "f know by experience that Irish Papists 
never meet without dividing and degrading themselves." 

Yes, division has been the curse of Irish counsels, and " divide 
to reign " was for century after century the golden rule of the Eng- 
lish conquerors in their dealings with the native tribes. From the 
day when Strongbow and his Norman knights landed to assist one 
of the petty kings of Ireland against another, down to the day when 
the disgraceful squabble took place at the banquet that commemo- 
rated the centenary of the Liberator, Daniel O'Connell, the Goddess 
of Discord has never ceased to be adored in Ireland. So recently 
as October, 1882, we find two Home Rule Members of Parliament 
quarreling fiercely at a public meeting in Dublin, the one " thrust- 
ing back in his teeth " the assertions of the other, and entreating 
indulgence for the Irish faction in Parliament, as having " to face not 
only the enemy in front, but the more bitter enemies behind! " 

There is an Irish saying that is given as the invariable excuse for 
all short-comings, wrong-doings — all sins of omission, if not com- 
mission — 

" Sure 'twas always so ! " 

The words apply with peculiar force to the domestic quarrels of 
Irishmen with Irishmen. 

The whole story of the agitation for Repeal may be summed up 
in some words that I borrow from Mr. A. M. Sullivan : " Dissension 
and doubt among the leaders." In the same words is told the his- 
tory of the periods of veiled rebellion or of Fenian outbreaks that 
have followed the death of the Liberator.* As it has been in the 
past so will it surely be in the future, and " 'twas always so ! " will 
remain to the end an appropriate comment on the disputes of Irish 
agitators with one another.f 

As well might a number of spiders be expected to combine for 
the purpose of spinning a single web as a band of Irish " patriots " 
to pursue one and the same policy. Every man of them has invari- 
ably his own threads of intrigue, and labors to combine them for his 
personal advantage. When, in pursuing his own ends, one Irish 
politician happens to get in the way of another, the Saxon world 
has long since learned to expect that there will follow, what Sir 
Lucius O'Trigger terms " a very pretty quarrel." 

There needs very little, either of evidence or argument, to show 
what a restored Parliament in Ireland would be, and how little it 

* One is reminded by the history of Irish agitation against England, of Cur- 
ran's story concerning a new lodging in which he had passed a single night — find- 
ing the " fleas so numerous and so ferocious that if they had but been unanimous 
they would have pulled him out of bed." 

f I once heard these words uttered by an indignant patriot : " I'd let every man 
be free to hold his own opinions ; and if he wouldn't, be jabers, I'd make him" 



512 THE OLD PARLIAMENT. 

would differ (except in religion) from that which the Union abol- 
ished. The revived Parliament in Stephen's Green would retain all 
its ancient, odious features and evil principles — except that from 
being, like that which existed up to 1800, exclusively Protestant — it 
would become, from the Speaker to the door-keeper, entirely Roman 
Catholic — or, at all events, a senate in which Roman Catholic mem- 
bers would so largely predominate that Protestants would be nonen- 
tities. It is to-day, as it was eighty years ago, impossible for the 
two parties to act together for the common good of their common 
country. While the Parliament for the three kingdoms meets at 
Westminster there is little scope for the display of religious animosi- 
ties ; but let a so-called national Parliament be set up in Dublin, and 
everywhere throughout Ireland the Catholic and the Protestant 
would soon be at " daggers-drawn." 

If Ireland was a kingdom before the arrival of Strongbow, it had 
many kings. To restore to his throne a chieftain whom four others 
had combined to expel was the assigned motive of Strongbow's in- 
vasion ; secretly, it was from the first intended to attach Ireland to 
the English crown. But for internal dissensions, one ruler striving 
against the invaders, another assisting them, a mere handful of Eng- 
lish knights and their followers could never have subjected the 
country. At first the English rule had at least the recommendation 
that, wherever it extended, it to a great extent substituted order for 
anarchy, and law for savage license. Among the Irish, things were 
then pretty much as Sir John Davies described the state of Ireland 
to be, at a later period : " No man could enjoy his life, wife, land, or 
goods in safety." But the spirit of the conquered race began, in 
process of time, to make its influence felt among the conquerors. 
Imbibing the genius of the Irish soil," writes the author of " Ire- 
land and its Rulers," " the Anglo-Normans and the Anglo-Saxons 
quarreled among themselves, as the ' mere Irish ' had done. The 
Fitzgeralds of Desmond and the Butlers of Ormond, each with their 
hundred castles and tens of thousands of followers, having van- 
quished the O's and Mac's, fought it out between themselves. 
" Where is now the proud Earl of Desmond ? " was tauntingly asked 
of the wounded chieftain by a band of Ormond's adherents as he 
was borne on their shoulders from the field. ' Where he ought to 
be,' was the answer ; ' still on the necks of the Butlers.' " 

It is a long stride from the days of the O'Briens and O'Haras, or 
even from those of the Desmonds and Ormonds, to Napoleon at St. 
Helena. But the genius of the Irish for squabbling among them- 
selves had remained as marked as ever, and the keen eye of Bona- 
parte had noted the fact. " If," he said to O'Meara at St. Helena, 
the Irish had sent honest men to me, I would have certainly made 
an attempt on Ireland. But I had no confidence either in the integ- 
rity or the talents of the Irish leaders that were in France. They 



COURTS OF JUSTICE. 5^ 

were divided in opinion, and were constantly quarreling with one 
another." 

Courts of Justice, sixty years ago, were rotten to the core : 
from the High Court of Chancery down to the " Courts of Con- 
science," as they were called, over which generally presided a citi- 
zen-tradesman (Protestant, of course) whose decision was "Law," 
who administered " Justice," and whose knowledge of the one was 
on a par with the amount that he dealt out of the other. The decis- 
ions of these Solomons of the bench — their " Honors " — were fre- 
quently matters for laughter : being indeed, as a rule, more merry 
than wise, for they were often wits, and always " jolly companions 
every one." 

Higher up in the world of law matters were very little better. 
An Irish judge of those days did not so much hold his dignified 
office during good conduct as by virtue of being a ready hand 
with the pistol. That was always the final arbiter both with the 
Bar and the Bench. In 182 1 I knew Lord Norbury, of whom it 
was said — and correctly said — he had fought his way to the judicial 
seat. 

Sixty years ago the declaration that a Roman Catholic might be 
an impartial judge would have been hooted down. The thought of 
a Roman Catholic Chancellor on the woolsack would have been suf- 
ficient to stir the whole Protestant population of Ireland to frenzy. 
But ever since the Catholic was admitted to full civic rights, a grad- 
ual but mighty revolution has been in progress. I, who knew Ire- 
land in days when there was not, and could not be, a single Roman 
Catholic on the bench, have lived to see a time when the majority of 
Irish judges are of that religion ; and a Catholic, in the person of 
Lord O'Hagan, has worthily upheld the dignity of the woolsack. 
Yet the Bench and the Bar in Ireland are now, to say the least, im- 
partial and upright as regards the former, and irreproachable in con- 
duct in the case of the latter. That could not have been said at the 
beginning of the century. Lord O'Hagan, during his occupation of 
the woolsack, was never once suspected of bias toward a plaintiff 
or defendant — because he was of his own religion. 

Murmurs are still heard sometimes against Irish juries, but how 
seldom can they be justified by anything deserving the name of evi- 
dence ! It was not so sixty years ago. The Grand Juries in espe- 
cial — always exclusively Protestant — were notoriously given to prefer- 
ring party interests to the claims of justice. Their presentments 
were invariably one-sided — often shamefully, or rather shamelessly, so. 
I can not find space to sustain this assertion by the quotation of facts ; 
but who that knows what Ireland was early in the century will ques- 
tion it ? Another fertile source of grievance was the packing of 
juries. Perhaps the evil was sometimes exaggerated ; for the limited 
choice exercised in the matter of juries resulted in a class of men 
33 



514 THE LAW COURTS. 

being available for the panel who were intellectually much superior 
to the Irish juries of to-day ; but still to set twelve " good men and 
true " who were all Protestants to try a Roman Catholic was utterly 
unjust. In such cases, especially when the offense was political, the 
verdict was generally a foregone conclusion. 

I once saw at Castlebar a slip of paper, perhaps sixty years old, 
that some curiosity-monger had preserved. It contained simply this 
sentence — " The Right Honorable expects you'll acquit the pris- 
oner." I learned its origin ; it was as follows : While a man was on 
trial for his life, " the Right Honorable " — in other words the High 
Sheriff, a brother of the Marquis of Sligo, who ruled with a rod of 
iron the counties of Mayo and Sligo — had handed to the crier the 
slip, in open court ; and the crier in turn handed it to the foreman 
of the jury. The accused was, of course, acquitted ; but the result 
would have been quite as certain if the Right Honorable had in- 
formed the fearless and independent jury that he expected them to 
convict the prisoner. 

If any thoughtful reader of these pages will look into the records 
of the Irish Courts of Law and Equity early in the present century, 
he will find the tale told to be one of systematic oppression. From 
the highest in the State downward, tyrannous injustice prevailed, 
and venality was its common accompaniment. How is the govern- 
ment of Ireland conducted now ? No matter what may be his re- 
ligious or political creed, an impartial observer will answer that it is 
based on rectitude, and animated by the conviction that even-handed 
justice is politically wise as well as morally right. Yet Mr. Parnell 
did not shrink from describing this altered state of things as the 
subjection of Ireland " by the power of a perfidious, cruel, and un- 
relenting English enemy." 

What would Lord Palmerston have said had he lived to read 
such a comment as that on the Roman Catholic Relief Bill, such a 
response to the words I quote, addressed by him to the House of 
Commons more than half a century ago ? — 

" ' I can not sit down,' said Lord Palmerston, 'without expressing the sat- 
isfaction I feel, in common with the nation at large, at the determination 
which the Government has at last adopted to give peace to Ireland. The 
measure now before us will open a career of happiness to that country which 
for centuries it has been forbidden to taste, and to England a prospect of 
commercial prosperity and national strength which has never yet been re- 
corded in our annals. The labors of the present session will link together 
two classes of the community which have long been dissevered ; they will 
form in history the true mark which is to divide the shadow of morning twi- 
light from the brilliant effulgence of the risen sun : they will form a monu- 
ment, not of the crime or ambition of man, not of the misfortunes or con- 
vulsions of society, but of the calm and deliberate operation of benevolent 
wisdom watching the good of the human race — an act which will pass down 
to the latest posterity as an object of their respect, gratitude, and admiration.' " 
— " Lord Dalling's Life of Palmerston," p. 341. 



THE JEWS. 5I5 

It was long after the passing of the " Relief " Bill, that placed 
the Roman Catholic on a level with the Protestant without any 
qualifying clause — for, as the Duke of Wellington said in the House, 
on the 2d of April, 1830, " He had so framed the measure as to con- 
cede everything, and ask nothing" — that attempts were made to 
obtain civil rights and freedom of conscience for the Jews. 

In 1830 an effort was made to relieve them of their disabilities. 
Mr. R. Grant moved in the House for leave to bring in a bill to that 
effect, and, although supported by Macaulay and Mackintosh, no 
issue at that time followed. It was stated by the mover that in 
Great Britain the Jews were excluded from holding any office, civil 
or military, under the Government ; that they were excluded from 
practicing law or physic ; from holding any corporate office, and 
from being members of Parliament ; and they might be prevented 
from voting for members of Parliament if the oath were tendered 
to them ; that in the metropolitan city they could not obtain the 
freedom of the Companies, nor exercise any retail trade. Mr. R. 
Grant little foresaw the time when an estimable and honored Jew 
was Lord Mayor of London, another Jew was Master of the Rolls, 
and several Jews had become members of the Imperial Parliament. 

It was but natural that supporters of the motion should refer to 
the rights so recently accorded to the Roman Catholics. Here, it 
was argued, there was no foreign head ; no divided allegiance ; no 
bulls ; no indulgences ; no priests exercising a despotic influence 
over their flocks ; no agitations ; no violent addresses ; no mobs dis- 
ciplined with almost the regularity of men-at-arms ; no attempts at 
proselytizing. The Jews " were proud not to make proselytes." It 
could not be said, as it had been said in the other case, the Govern- 
ment was showing its weakness by yielding to clamor. The Jews 
asked for relief in a calm and temperate tone. 

Among the leading opponents was Sir Robert Peel — mainly on 
the ground that, if Christianity was not the basis of representation 
in Parliament, atheists and infidels would not be refused admittance. 
He asked why Quakers were excluded. They were not long so. 
The Jews were within a very few years afterward placed politically 
and socially on a par with Christians of all denominations. 

It has surely proved a wise as well as a just decision. There are 
no more loyal subjects, no better citizens, no abler or more willing 
constitutional helps. They have not taken advantage of the power 
given them to excite hostility and hatred to England, making it a 
foreboding boast that England's extremity is Ireland's opportunity, 
threatening to shackle the right arm of England in the event of any 
perilous dispute with any foreign nations ; exciting, in time of do- 
mestic difficulty, to shake public credit by a run upon the banks ; 
counseling domestic discord as evidence of wisdom. 

The Jews were thus made thoroughly English, and it is well for 
England that so powerful, so wise, and so loyal a body became 



516 THE ENCUMBERED ESTATES COURT. 

" part and parcel of the State." A people who were a great people 
centuries before 

" Great was Diana of the Ephesians," 

and had historians and poets long before the wolf suckled two broth- 
ers on the barren plain where after-ages saw the Colosseum. 

These notes concerning the admission of Jews to the benefits of 
the Constitution — more recent than that of the Roman Catholics — 
will not be considered needless or out of place by those who think 
what " Catholic Ireland " might have been had Ireland received the 
boon in the same spirit — in grateful remembrance of conceded 
rights. What, by this time, might not Ireland have been if her pa- 
triots had directed their energies into channels at least as favorable 
for progress to tranquillity, happiness, and prosperity ! 

Alas ! it was the vain hope of Richard Lalor Sheil, when all he 
asked for, in addressing the famous meeting on Penenden Heath — 
nay, far more than he asked for — had been accorded to Irishmen by 
Englishmen : " You will make a permanent acquisition of the affec- 
tions of Irishmen, and make our hearts your own." 

In fact, sixty years ago, the Irish peasant had right good reason 
for believing there was law enough in Ireland ; but he had almost 
equal reason for refusing to believe that the Irishman by nationality 
and Catholic by religion could anywhere find justice. What con- 
fidence could a Roman Catholic have in the justice dealt out by 
courts where the judge, the jury, the leading members of the Bar — 
nay, the very officials of the court, down to the jailer and the tip- 
staff — were all of them zealous Protestants ? 

While dealing with the subject of Irish Courts of Justice I may 
take occasion to revert to one that did not exist sixty years ago, but 
was the creation of comparatively recent times. I refer to the En- 
cumbered Estates Court. In 1848 the bill that called it into being 
became law ; and the court set to work to deal with numerous Irish 
estates that were in the hands of broken bankrupts, impoverished 
spendthrifts, or (as was often the case) of men whose fathers' ex- 
cesses had left them the nominal owners of large properties, while 
their actual incomes were so small that they sometimes failed to 
keep the wolf from the door. 

To comment on the immense changes effected by the passing of 
that bill would require much more space than I have at my com- 
mand ; but some idea of them may be formed from the words of 
John Francis Maguire, M. P. : 

"From October, 1849, to August, 1859, the gross amount realized by the 
property sold in the Court of Encumbered Estates reached to the prodigious 
sum of ,£25,190,839. The sacrifice of property during the first years of the 
operation of this court was sad to contemplate. It ruined many and enriched 



PACKING JURIES. 517 

others. It annihilated the owner, robbed the later incumbrancers, and con- 
ferred estates for half their real value on purchasers lucky or daring enough 
to speculate in land at such a period of general depression and alarm." 

Nevertheless, the operation of the act was eventually productive 
of the extensive and material benefit to Ireland that its framers had 
in view. It took a large portion of the land out of the hands of 
owners, too extravagant and too deeply in debt, to expend capital in 
the improvement of the soil, and transferred that soil to men who 
were possessed of both the will and the means to develop its re- 
sources. All over Ireland prosperous landlords replaced poverty- 
stricken predecessors, and by this change the tenantry largely bene- 
fited. 

Very recently a crowning improvement has been effected in the 
administration of Irish justice. I refer to the reform of the jury 
system due to the act of 187 1. That act, in the words of Lord 
O'Hagan, " took away the possibility of any malversation on the part 
of the sheriff by depriving him of his power of arbitrary choice, and 
for the first time since the introduction of English law to Ireland, 
gave the people an absolute assurance that, for no purpose and under 
no circumstances, should a sheriff thereafter select a jury to perpe- 
trate injustice." 

" Packing " juries in Ireland was the regular thing ; and it was 
certain that sheriffs were often bribed. Mr. Brougham, speaking in 
the House in 1823, "would not say that the man who would pack 
one jury to acquit a prisoner of felony might not readily pack an- 
other to convict a man of high treason." 

In many cases the sheriffs received regular fees not to call to 
serve on juries the persons who paid them. Thus the wealthier and 
better educated classes were exempt, while those who were less able 
to discharge the duty, and more easily influenced for or against, were 
" to well and truly try and true issue make." 

Moreover, the proof is not left to novelists that money was regu- 
larly paid to the sheriffs by persons who anticipated writs to give due 
notice in time to keep out of the way of them. 

Cities and Towns. — I have pictured the cabins, and the men, 
women, and children who lived in them, fifty or sixty years ago — the 
one miserable, the other wretched, if judged by the standard of 
rural life in England. The peasantry born and reared in these 
hovels were — and are — the men, examples of fine physical manhood, 
the women, unsurpassed in any country of the world, for the purity 
that hallows the sex. It was not so in the cities and towns. While 
the rural atmosphere was healthful, that of the congregated houses, 
many or few, was poisonous to body and mind. Let us picture the 
capital, Dublin, as it was sixty years ago, and continued to be up to 
a much later period. I borrow details from Whitelaw's " History of 



518 DUBLIN SIXTY YEARS AGO. 

Dublin," left incomplete by him in 1817, and finished by my friend 
the Rev. Robert Walsh, LL. D. The statements found therein may 
be relied upon. 

Speaking of the district called "The Liberty," Whitelaw says 
"the greater portion of the streets were occupied by petty shop- 
keepers, the laboring poor, and beggars, crowded together to a 
degree distressing to humanity." 

Three or four families inhabited a single apartment, so as to 
lighten the rent two shillings to one shilling per week. " Hence we 
may find ten to sixteen persons of all ages and sexes in a room not 
fifteen feet square, stretched on a wad of filthy straw swarming with 
vermin, and without any covering save the wretched rags that con- 
stitute their wearing apparel. . . . Thirty-two contiguous houses 
contained nine hundred and seventeen inhabitants. There was not 
one covered sewer in the district, the filth from each house being 
flung out of the window into the back-yard, where it accumulated 
until sometimes it reached the level of the first floor before it would 
be removed. Some houses were without back-yards, the inhabitants 
being obliged to throw all filth into the street, into uncovered sewers." 

Mr. O'Connell in 1824 stated that "within ten miles of Dublin, 
out of fourteen or fifteen families there were only two found in which 
there was a blanket " ; that in many parts they " slept in their 
clothes " ; seldom having bedsteads, and " no covering for their 
beds." 

Whitelaw further says : " On the subject of dram-shops, the most 
alarming of all nuisances," one street, Thomas Street, had one hun- 
dred and ninety houses ; of those fifty-two were licensed to sell raw 
spirits, " a poison productive of vice, riot, and disease, hostile to all 
habits of decency, honesty, and industry, and, in short, destructive 
to the souls and bodies of our fellow-creatures. The.y are open day 
and night, causing scenes of unceasing profanity, which even the 
sanctity of the Sabbath can not suspend." 

Notwithstanding the naturally salubrious position of Dublin, he 
complains of nineteen church-yards and nine slaughter-houses taint- 
ing the air, the death-rate being about one in forty-one. Small-pox 
was very prevalent, one person in three dying, the prejudice against 
vaccination being very strong.* 

In twenty years the coal consumption of Dublin has been doubled. 
This is largely attributable to the greatly increased consumption of 
the article in manufacturing and other purposes quite apart from 
domestic duties. The Alliance and Gas Consumers' Company used, 

* Thomas Reid, F. R. C. S., writing in 1822, says : " I invariably found the in- 
crease of children in Ireland to be in an inverse proportion to the means possessed 
by their parents to support them. I have often seen nine, ten, or eleven children 
all of one family — some ragged, others quite naked — existing, rather than living, 
in places that would shock the humanity of an English gentleman to see his dogs 
or swine driven into." 



ASSASSINA TIONS. 



519 



during the last twelve months, about 100,000 tons, and the various 
railways having their termini in Dublin use probably another 100,000 
tons. The harbor-dues in Dublin increased in the three years end- 
ing 1879 by nearly ^14,000. There was an increase in the period 
1841 to 187 1 of over 18 per cent in the number of inhabited houses, 
and of 5 per cent in the population. 

I append to this retrospect of the past of Dublin the warning of 
Mr. Justice O'Brien, uttered in November, 1882, and leave the case 
to speak for itself. It is a warning of what the fair city may be here- 
after. " It was," he said, referring to Dublin, " only too evident that 
decay was silently, but speedily, invading every interest which de- 
pends upon the prosperity of the city. Trade was languishing, if it 
was not entirely extinct. Houses — he might almost say streets — are 
deserted. Every person who could carry his fortune elsewhere was 
fleeing from it as from a place infested with the plague, and destitu- 
tion was settling down steadily but surely upon the humbler classes 
of the population — upon all those who depended upon employment 
for their daily living." Truly the agitators of to-day are to be — con- 
gratulated : but not by Ireland or the Irish. 

It would be a curious and an interesting calculation to estimate 
the loss to the country by the forced absence of the Empress of 
Austria from Ireland during the hunting season of 1882 ; adding to 
it that which has been caused by expressed, and, in some places, ex- 
ecuted threats against the gentry of the country who keep hounds — 
mainly for the enjoyment of their neighbors, and who dare not ven- 
ture on the almost national custom of following them to cover. 
These are but minor results of the war — peasants against gentry — 
stirred up by the evil men who have been worse than evil advisers 
of the people. 

The Assassinations of 1882 gave a shock to humanity. Fifty 
years ago such crimes were more numerous — and worse. That as- 
sertion will hardly be received as truth ; but it is capable of proof. 
The murder of a household at Cong — the Maamtrasna tragedy — has 
a frightful parallel in the butchery of the Sheas. If it were my de- 
sign to excite horror I could supply a very long list of appalling 
atrocities perpetrated in Ireland forty, fifty, or sixty years ago.* 

Yes, things may be bad in Ireland now, but they have been 
worse. Let any one turn to the hundred and fifty volumes of the 
Annual Register, and he will find, year after year, nay, month by 
month, startling and gloomy records of its condition during a cen- 

* In 1831 Mrs. Hemans thus described a visit to Kilkenny, the residence of 
her brother, Colonel Browne : " We paid a visit to a clergyman's house, . . . 
and found a guard of eight armed policemen stationed at the gate : the window- 
ledges were all provided with great stones for the convenience of hurling down 
upon assailants, and the master of the house had not for a fortnight taken a walk 
without loaded pistols." 



520 



MURDERS OF THE POLICE. 



tury before the present time. " Fearful state of that country, and 
increase of homicide and outrages," seems to be a stereotyped sen- 
tence in every Report. Landlords were shot by scores every year, 
and arms were stolen from every respectable house. 

I well remember the horror excited by the burning and butchery 
of the Sheas in 182 1. Their offense had been only the dismissal of 
an obnoxious tenant. Their thatched cabin was set on fire by a 
gang of miscreants, and its inmates, to the number of seventeen, 
were either burned to death or slaughtered as they sought escape. 
Seventeen bodies in all were found in the yet burning embers, when 
the police arrived at the terrible scene. Among them was a young 
woman, who, during the burning, gave premature birth to a child. 
She strove to conceal it in a tub in which was some water ; the 
bodies of both were found among the dead. The number of the 
murderers was about forty. All of them were known to the neigh- 
bors — some were " friends " of the Sheas, and several persons were 
actually looking dow.n on them from an adjacent height, and there- 
fore well able to identify the miscreants. These were examined by 
the magistrates, but denied all knowledge. The eager, anxious, and 
busy police failed to procure a tittle of evidence ; a year and a half 
passed before any was obtained. Large rewards were offered in 
vain. At length the remorse of one of the witnesses prevailed ; her 
priest had urged her to confess publicly, and the awful story at 
length came out. For the murders of the Sheas a number of peo- 
ple, I forget how many — eight, I think — were hanged close to the 
blackened ruins of the cottage, that for a long time afterward con- 
tinued to appall those who visited the Golden Vale of Tipperary. 

I reluctantly recall this awful event — describing it thus briefly. 
The murder of the four victims at Maamtrasna — bad enough, truly 
— was as nothing compared with the butchery of the Sheas sixty 
years ago. 

The murder of the policeman, Kavanagh, in 1882, excited gen- 
eral abhorrence. The victim was doing only his duty ; he was as 
much the guardian of the poor as the rich, of the tenant as the land- 
lord. In the churchyard of Kilmogany (Kilkenny County) were, in 
December, 1831, laid the bodies of fourteen policemen and their 
commanding officer, butchered at a place called Carrickshock. The 
police had been lured into a narrow defile ; the ascents on either 
side were thronged by more t than two thousand men, armed with 
scythes, pitchforks, and reaping-hooks ; but their most effective 
weapons were stones. Of the party of thirty-six, fifteen were slain, 
others being wounded, of whom two died, while but two of the 
peasants were shot.* 

* The historian of this tragedy must state, however, that when the police were 
in the defile, and found themselves surrounded by more than fifty to one — with the 
almost certainty of death — the peasantry offered to retire and do them no harm, on 



INFORMERS. 521 

On the 14th of December, 1831, that frightful massacre took 
place. Although the worst, it was but one of many fatal fights that 
arose out of tithes — fifty years ago the most detested and loathsome 
of all the tax-oppressions to which the Irish had to submit. 

True, we have the Fenians now ; but are the Whiteboys, the 
Peep o' Day Boys, the Carders, the Steelboys, the Oakboys, the Rib- 
bonmen, the Thrashers, the Caravets, and the Shamavests — are they 
and their doings forgotten, not to go so far back as the times of the 
Rapparees, and a score of rebel — utterly lawless — associations under 
other names, that have infested Ireland in the past ? 

[In 1838 or 1839 Government offered a reward of ^5,000, and a 
hundred acres of land in any of the colonies, for information that 
would lead to the conviction of the murderers of Lord Norbury, and 
about the same period J~3,ooo in the case of the murder of Mr. 
Butler Bryan. They are undiscovered to this day.] 

Informers. — There is nothing in the Irish character so fruitful 
of evil as the " crime " of being an " informer," " crimes " — at least 
some of them — that applied to other people, and under other cir- 
cumstances, would be characterized as heroic. There are few 
brighter scenes in Scottish history than that which shows to us 
" bonnie Prince Charlie " hiding in the caves at Arasaig, sleeping 
every night in the hovel of a peasant, to whom a single guinea 
would have been wealth ; yet none betrayed him. There are hun- 
dreds now in Ireland, and there have been during every period of 
its history, to whom treachery would have brought riches. 

I dare not pursue a topic that would lead me upon dangerous 
ground ; but while I know the principle to be most calamitous and 
fruitful of evil, I can not admit it to be altogether evidence of the 
darker, and not the brighter, side of Irish character. I might give 
many cases to prove it is often the one and not the other.* 

condition of their giving up to " wild justice " the person of the tithe-process server 
they were protecting in his perilous business of serving writs. The demand was, 
without a moment's demur, refused ; to the honor of the constabulary be it re- 
corded. The process-server was mortally wounded. 

* While at Limerick, in 1840, I heard this anecdote. The incident had just 
occurred. A man named Byrne was well known to be in possession of full knowl- 
edge as to who had committed a murder for which some " suspects" were in jail. 
A shrewd attorney induced him, on some pretense concerning his lease, to visit 
him at his office. It was market-day : many persons were passing by his window, 
and the window was open. Byrne suspected nothing. But while he was in con- 
sultation with the attorney, several witnesses of the audience were sent about with 
rumors that Byrne had become an informer. The rumors obtained ready credence, 
two men actually being arrested while he was the attorney's guest ; it was more 
than intimated such arrests resulted from his visit. And when the attorney told 
him of the " mess " he was in, out of which there was no escaping — that in fact he 
was caught in a trap — the man saw and knew there was but one way out of it ; that 
he was forced to become an informer. He did so become, and on his evidence three 
men were hanged. 



522 



PROCESS-SER VERS. 



Yes, the name of " informer " was always inconceivably odious in 
Ireland, and the people almost universally joined in execrating that 
which they believed to be the blackest of all crimes. Unhappily the 
principle remains when the excuse for it has ceased : but I could 
tell stories, and not of a very far-off period, that would make the 
Law, as it operated in Ireland, almost as detestable in the sight of 
the readers of these pages as it was in the view of those who suffered 
from it. 

In Tipperary, some forty years ago — a county, by-the-way, in which 
I spent a week, distant from any town, and in the house of a wealthy 
holder of land, where not a single bar or bolt was ever drawn upo?t door 
or window — I remember making the acquaintance of one of a singu- 
lar class — a man who had been a process-server there for a quarter 
of a century, and was still alive ! It is needless to say that his 
escapes had been many ; some of them, indeed, were so extraordi- 
nary as almost to exceed belief. He was a tall, powerfully made fel- 
low, known by the sobriquet of " Long Jim," and as he lived in the 
good old times, and in a locality where the law seldom ventured to 
touch gentle or simple, both his daring and his cunning were often 
exercised. I contrived to obtain his confidence, and the stories he 
related to me of his perils and escapes might fill a goodly volume. 
I have only space here for one or two of them. 

There was one gentleman who had long set at defiance all legal 
missives. He lived in the midst of his tenantry in a very secluded 
part of the country, where a sheriff's officer would as soon have ven- 
tured as into a den of hungry lions. Jim at length undertook to 
serve him with a writ. How to deliver it, and get off with a sound 
skin, was, of course, the dilemma. In this perplexity, Jim happened 
to learn that his intended victim was very partial to a goose-egg for 
his breakfast. That was cue enough. Jim set out at midnight, 
arrived at the mansion before daybreak, and climbed a tree that 
directly fronted the hall door — having first taken care to place a 
goose-egg on the steps, and under it a narrow strip of paper. All 
turned out as he expected ; the gentleman issued forth early to 
breathe the morning air, and at once perceived the egg that had 
been deposited at his threshold. " Ah, ah ! " said he, " that's the 
gray goose, I'll go bail ; that always has such consideration for my 
breakfast," and seeing a piece of paper on the ground he very natu- 
rally took it up to examine it. On the instant a voice from the tree 
bellowed out, "That's the copy, and here's the original"; and, added 
Jim, when he told me the story, "while he ran in for his pistols, 
didn't I show him the heels of my brogues ! " 

I remember the story of another fellow who had to serve a writ 
on a fire-eating magistrate. He so managed as to be caught cutting 
sticks in the gentleman's demesne, was brought before him by the 
policeman, charged with the offense, and committed to prison. Im- 
mediately upon which he served the writ, and, turning to the police- 



THE CONSTABULARY. 



523 



man, said, "I'm under your protection," and was marched off safe 
and sound. 

Though I might fill several of these pages with anecdotes of 
" Long Jim's " shrewdness, I prefer to close my brief notices of the 
race of process-servers with a story related to me by another of the 
proscribed tribe. 

A man who turned from his wicked ways and had become a car- 
driver, once drove me some twenty miles through a very disturbed 
and dangerous county. Dick, who was, unlike Jim, a small and 
delicately formed man, was " out " one day with a comrade serving 
writs. They had but one horse between them, and as evening was 
drawing on, their duty being done, they were about to commence 
their homeward journey, when they saw the peasants gathering on 
the hills about them. They well knew what was meant, and his 
comrade, who was on the horse, called to Dick to mount instantly ; 
but in the attempt he fell. His companion galloped off, and Dick, 
thus deserted, made a rush into the nearest cabin, which happened 
to be empty. His enemies were soon after him. Dick fixed himself 
in the farthest corner of the cottage, and took out his solitary pistol. 
Now Dick squinted terribly, and as his foes gathered about the door 
he presented his weapon, his eyes rolling frightfully as he exclaimed, 
" I can only shoot one of ye, and I have my eye on the man I'll shoot." 
The obliquity of his vision made each of the party think himself the 
man doomed ; they shrank back, and retired to deliberate, and had 
actually proceeded to remove the roof, in order to stone him to death 
in comparative security, when Dick's comrade, with a party of police, 
hove in sight, and Dick's life was saved. 

And what of the Police ? Sixty years ago they were few in num- 
ber, and worse than useless. When not objects of hatred, they were 
of indifference ; never liked, and seldom feared. Powerless to pre- 
vent or detect crime, evil-doers rarely took them into account at all ; 
and, generally, they were better away than at hand, when any out- 
break threatened or any private conspiracy against a landlord was 
on the point of breaking out. 

Anthony Trollope, in describing them in one of his novels, 
divides the force into two parts. The one body, he tells us, was 
employed to prevent the distillation of potheen — illicit spirits brewed 
in the mountains, " where kings dinna ken " — or to seize it when 
made ; the other was intended to quell the riots created by its con- 
sumption.* Early in the century it was with the Irish police literally 
a case of " their hands against every man, and every man's hand 

* Dr. Walsh states that the first appointment of a night-watch in Dublin was so 
late as 1723, when an Act was passed under which the different parishes were 
required to appoint "honest men and good Protestants" to be night-watchmen. 
Sixty years ago, if there was a Roman Catholic in the force he kept the secret of 
his religion to himself. 



524 



THE CONSTABULARY. 



against them." It was almost the same with the Coast Guard — the 
"preventive service" organized to suppress smuggling. A large pro- 
portion of the gain made by seizure was given to the officers and men; 
consequently, notwithstanding the unpopularity of the force, which 
inferred continual danger, there was no difficulty in obtaining re- 
cruits among either the gentry or the commonalty of the country. 

The first introduction of an armed police force into Ireland was 
in 1787 ; prior to that time constables were appointed by Courts Leet 
and by magistrates at Quarter Sessions. By the 27 Geo. III. some 
improvements were made. Powers were given to grand juries (all, 
without exception, being Protestants) to appoint sub-constables, 
" being Protestants," and payments were ordered to be made to 
" armed Protestants " who assisted them in conveying prisoners, etc. 
In 1792,32 Geo. Ill, there were other alterations made; but no 
Papist was admitted into the force. The constables wore no uniform, 
and generally continued to follow their customary avocations. In 
1 8 14 Sir Robert Peel, then Chief Secretary, introduced some salutary 
changes. The force, as a -term of scorn, and in evidence of hatred, 
were thence called " Peelers." It became so obnoxious to the 
peasantry, and consequently the service so perilous, that few men of 
good habits joined it. The appointments were generally given to 
" followers " of gentlemen of influence — in many instances the men 
were their gamekeepers, and in some cases their domestic servants. 
It was not until 1836 (6 Will. IV) that the force, as it is now con- 
stituted, was introduced into Ireland. Thenceforward all distinc- 
tions of religion ceased ; and it is of very rare occurrence that the 
mixing of Catholics with Protestants has led to disputes in the force 
— certainly not more frequently than happens in any marching regi- 
ment. The change has been a blessed change. The old idea that 
all persons in the service of the law were to protect the rich from the 
encroachments of the poor has been abrogated ; in a word, the police 
force has the confidence of the people, and by degrees, from being a 
most unpopular body, it has become almost universally popular. 
Not only in the detection, but in the prevention of crime, it works 
well. The knowledge that it is invariably on the alert to detect 
crime has naturally been efficacious in preventing it. 

" The constabulary force has been of the greatest advantage to 
Ireland, whether considered socially or morally." That was my view 
in 1842,* and succeeding years have confirmed it. I may add to it 
the declaration — concerning these men — of the historian Froude : 

* The Royal Irish Constabulary force consists of an effective strength of about 
11,000 men and 230 officers, costing about ^1,100,000 per annum ; but the Ex- 
chequer collected from counties and proclaimed districts for extra police force in 
1878-79, nearly ,£27,000, nearly £28,000 in i87g-'8o, and £19,000 in i88o-'8i. 
The Dublin Metropolitan force, established by Act of Parliament in 1836, consists 
now of 158 officers and 978 men, the service, with that of the Courts, costing in 
1880 ,£138,938, the Treasury contributing £88,000 of the amount. 



DRUNKENNESS.— FACTION FIGHTS. 525 

" They are at once the most sorely tempted and the most nobly 
faithful of all subjects of the British race " ; and Dr. Forbes, a phy- 
sician of rare intelligence and keen habits of observation, after spend- 
ing " a Holiday in Ireland," thus wrote of them in 1852 : " They are 
the picked men of Ireland, and being so, I verily believe it is scarcely 
an exaggeration to say are also the picked men of mankind." This 
passage is from Dr. Macaulay : " The more I saw of the force, the 
more I was impressed with its efficiency and its peculiar adaptation 
to the requirements of the country." 

Testimony equally strong has been supplied by every writer con- 
cerning Ireland. That which I gave in 1842, when the force, if not 
in its infancy, was in its youth, is the testimony of all who have since 
had opportunities of testing and estimating its worth. Courteous, 
obliging, always ready and willing to communicate information and 
render aid, every traveler has found them ; loyal to their oaths ; 
trusted, and invariably to be trusted ; patient under the severest tests 
of temper ; faithful found when avoidance of duty might have seemed 
excusable ; shirking no personal peril, never counting the odds, 
though often half a score have been surrounded by hundreds of 
infuriated "enemies — it would be difficult to praise overmuch the 
police of to-day, when contrasting them with the force of the times 
to which I have taken my readers back. 

Surely it ought to be added, even at the risk of repetition, that 
though the major part of the force is Roman Catholic, cases of quar- 
rels between the members of that faith and their Protestant brethren 
have been so rare as not to have been taken into account at all. 
They live together in harmony, each, no doubt, preferring his own, 
but neither considering creed a subject for acrimony — even for dis- 
cussion — as interrupting or disturbing discharge of duty. 

Drunkenness. — On this subject I have written so fully elsewhere, 
that reference to it only is necessary here — as manifesting the changes 
wrought by time in Ireland. I have said that a drunkard in an Irish 
drawing-room now is as rare as a pickpocket ; while the peasant, 
when drunk, skulks to his home from the public-house through by- 
ways, ashamed to let the " neighbors " see him. These blessings re- 
main — the bequests of the good Franciscan friar, the Rev. Theobald 
Mathew. " God be wid ye ! " — you who carried the Sunday-Closing 
Bill, and will coax or force through Parliament even greater and more 
important measures for averting from Ireland the national curse. 

So it is of Faction Fights. Now and then the ghost of one is 
seen — to terrify instead of gratify a parish — and magistrates are called 
upon to inflict nominal fines for breaches of the peace. But those 
who would study them, in association with the calamities they 
brought and wrought, must go a long way back into the history of 
things that have been. 



526 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIEF BILL. 

The Roman Catholic Relief Bill. — The passing of the Bill 
for emancipating the Roman Catholics is, of all the debates to which 
I have been a listener and have reported, that which has the strong- 
est hold upon my memory. The great advocate of their claims — 
Canning — was dead ; so was Macintosh ; so was Tierney ; while their 
great opponent — Peel — and he who had opposed them with equal 
bitterness — Wellington — were still living. But it had been for some 
time known that both of these famous leaders of the Tory party had 
changed their opinions and had become what some termed ' con- 
verts " and others " renegades." When the Iron Duke felt that the 
time had come to bow to the force of circumstances and of public 
opinion, no man could longer doubt what the end would be. It was 
not long deferred, in spite of the weak King's reluctance to the pro- 
posed measure and feeble attempts to defer it. In his speech of the 
5th February, 1829, George IV published to all his subjects the fact 
that his Ministers had persuaded him against his will, by directing 
Parliament to " review the laws which imposed civil disabilities on 
his Majesty's Roman Catholic subjects." The main battle was pre- 
ceded by a skirmish, or rather by a mere parade of forces ; for the 
Bill that provided for the suppression of the " Catholic Association," 
as dangerous to the public peace, inconsistent with the spirit of the 
Constitution, and "effectually obstructing every effort permanently 
to improve the condition of Ireland," passed through both Houses 
with little difficulty — the friends of the Catholics regarding it as the 
stepping-stone to emancipation. On the day the Royal Message was 
read, Mr. Peel, who sat for Westbury (Oxford University, which he 
had previously represented, having rejected his appeal for re-election 
to the seat he had voluntarily resigned on declaring his change of 
opinion, with a view to taking the opinion of his constituents on such 
a change of front) rose on the 5th of March and moved that the 
" House resolve itself into a Committee of the whole House to con- 
sider the laws imposing civil disabilities on his Majesty's Roman 
Catholic subjects," and began by stating that the advice given to the 
King was the advice of " a united Cabinet." In a long argumenta- 
tive speech, full of facts and clear in reasoning, he gave his reasons 
for believing that " the time had come " ; that the necessity for 
yielding to the claims was irresistible ; but, as may readily be 
imagined, there was lacking in his long speech the tone of earnest- 
ness ; for Peel was not speaking with the vigorous convictions of a 
man who saw the cause he had long battled for about to triumph, 
but as a statesman conquered by the force of circumstances and con- 
vinced against his will. 

He was supported by the old advocates of the claims and by the 
converts, Huskisson, Goulburn, Charles Grant, North, Sir George 
Murray, and Sir Thomas Lethbridge. 

The majority was much larger than was expected : 348 voted for 
the motion and 160 against it. 



POOR LAWS. 527 

The country was "agitated"; and the protesting voices of those 
who foreboded in Catholic Emancipation disaster to Church and 
State were everywhere heard ; but their demands that the constituen- 
cies should be appealed to were negatived ; and Peel triumphantly 
carried his Bill into the House of Peers, where it was also passed by 
a large majority, 213 voting for the third reading, and 109 against ; 
that was on the 10th day of April, 1829 ; and the Bill received the 
Royal assent on the 13th April, 1829. 

Up to that time, or very nearly so, the three estates of the realm 
had opposed Emancipation earnestly and with resolute determina- 
tion. And not only was the majority in either House hostile, but 
George III, by his stubborn declaration that he would never con- 
sent to Emancipation, had made the full enfranchisement of the 
Catholics impossible while he lived.* Nor had George IV been 
sparing of similar declarations ; but his will, less obstinate than that 
of his father, yielded when the King found himself hard pressed by 
Wellington and Peel. 

Great as was the boon of Catholic Emancipation, its good effects 
to Ireland were largely neutralized by the unhappy agitation for 
Repeal. What might not O'Connell have done for his country if, 
instead of leading millions after him in the chase of a will-o'-the-wisp, 
he had directed his energies and theirs to turning to practical account 
the freedom obtained in 1829? 

" Let us," said Macaulay, long ago, " let us consider what by this 
time the condition of Ireland would have been if, after the passing 
of the Bill, a system of conciliation had been inaugurated in Ireland ; 
if its great leader, at that time more powerful to sway and direct its 
people than any sovereign who ruled over any community, had set 
his mind and heart to the work of — in a single word — improvement." 

Poor Laws — Workhouses. — I need not go over the Act intituled 
" An Act for the more effectual Relief of the destitute Poor of Ire- 
land," that received the Royal assent on the 31st July, 1838.! The 
words " more effectual " were inserted as showing that some kind of 
relief had been given in Ireland, though it had not proved effectual, 
e. g., hospitals, dispensaries, etc., supported principally by County 
Cess : but no State provision previously existed. The halt, the 

* The opposition of George III was based on his interpretation of the Corona- 
tion Oath. His speech on the occasion is on record. " I can give up my crown," 
said the King, " and retire from power ; I can quit my palace and live in a cottage ; 
I can lay my head on a block and lose my life ; but I can not break my oath." 

The words of the Duke of York, spoken many years afterward, when the 
speaker was heir to the throne, were, as I have elsewhere stated, equally emphatic 
in refusing the claims of the Roman Catholics to be admitted within the pale of the 
Constitution. 

f The Poor Law for Ireland, when introduced into the House of Commons was 
strongly opposed by O'Connell ; but so it was by Mr. Shaw, a prominent represent- 
ative on the other side. 



528 POOR LAWS. 

maimed, the blind, and the afflicted of all diseases, the destitute, the 
aged, and the forsaken infant, were left entirely to private charity. 
Those who know Ireland, know that charity is there a fountain that 
is never dry. Among the poor this duty of man to man is con- 
sidered as the most solemn and sacred of all ; next to man's 
duty to God ! To render the appeal of the hungry and naked more 
forcible, superstition came to the aid of nature ; and to turn away 
the starving, or refuse shelter to the houseless wanderer, was con- 
sidered to evoke a curse under which none could thrive. No worse 
a character could be given to any man than that " he was a hard 
man to the poor." But in spite of these generous features of the 
Irish character, it was none the less a disgrace to civilization that the 
highways and by-ways were crowded with the destitute of all ages, of 
whom the State took no charge, and to whom the Legislature had 
given no thought. That evil exists no longer. It is by no means my 
intention to canvass this subject, a subject in England, as in Ireland, 
very difficult, intricate, and upon which opinions are much divided. 
I must consider the change as fruitful of benefits incalculable to the 
Irish people. In the workhouses cleanliness is not only inculcated 
as a duty, but rendered imperative ; and out of this must arise im- 
mense benefit, if not to the present, certainly to the after generation. 
Ventilation is made to contribute to health, and to give the valuable 
influence of example. Decent beds in place of miserable heaps of 
wet and filthy straw, not only contribute to existing comforts, but 
they become necessaries — necessaries that will be procured thereafter 
by those who have had experience of their advantages. Wholesome 
food — poor as it would be considered by the English pauper — and in 
sufficient quantities, instead of food insufficient in amount and of bad 
quality ; shelter from the weather ; warm and comfortable apart- 
ments, both by day and night ; good and ample clothing ; habits of 
cleanliness, decency, and order — such are, in brief, the advantages 
which the workhouse presents ; if they are advantages to be de- 
scribed and treated as the rights of the English poor, they are, in 
truth, " novelties " with which the Irish poor had been theretofore 
utterly unacquainted. The love of liberty — or, to speak more cor- 
rectly, the hatred of restraint — that has ever characterized the Irish 
peasant, will always prevent the workhouse from being over-full. In 
truth, the marvel is not that so many resort to " the house," but that 
it is avoided by any who are in penury and want. The natural love 
of liberty and abhorrence of restraint, added to the force of family 
attachments, keep many back from the refuge provided, until the 
extreme of destitution compels application for relief. 

As a consequence of the establishment of a Poor-law system in 
Ireland, the beggars are all gone, or very nearly so. Those who re- 
member Ireland fifty years ago will recall the terrible scenes of 
wretchedness they encountered whenever the coach stopped to 



IRISH BEGGARS. 5 2 9 

change horses at a wayside inn, or when they were walking abroad 
to take the air. Frequently, when traveling, our car was surrounded 
by beggars, numbering from a score to a hundred. One evening I 
remember (it was at Macroom) I had promised, in order to induce 
the beggars to leave us alone while we visited the castle in quiet, that 
I would give them nothing then, but would give to each a penny the 
next morning. I had actually to produce tweive shillings to redeem 
my promise. 

The wit of the beggars in Ireland, supplied, perhaps, the rarest 
and best examples of its natural growth. It was of course ever 
mixed with blarney — that particular mode of speech which the 
Americans term " soft sawder," but which the Irish only know how 
to use to perfection — flattering so speciously and so delicately that 
offense is out of the question. 

The most remarkable assemblage jf beggars I ever encountered 
was during a visit I paid to Maria Edgeworth, at Edgeworthstown. 
Driving with her one day into the neighboring town of Longford, the 
carriage was soon surrounded. She said to one of them, "You 
know I never give you anything." Quick and ready was the answer : 
" Oh, the Lord forgive ye, Miss Edgeworth, that's the first lie ye 
ever told." 

I am not inventing or drawing on imagination when I repeat the 
sentences I caught, to remember and record, from that very group. 
" Good luck to your ladyship's happy face this morning, sure you'll 
lave the light heart in my bosom before ye go." " Oh, then look at 
the poor who can't look at you, my lady ; the dark man that can't 
see if your beauty is like your sweet voice." " Darlin' gintleman, 
the heavens be your bed, and give us something." "Oh, the bless- 
ing of the widdy and five small children that's waiting for your 
honor's bounty be wid you on the road." "Oh, help the poor 
craythur that's got no children to show yer honor ; they're down 
in the sickness, and the man that owns them at sea." "They're 
keeping me back from the penny you're going to give me, lady 
dear, because I'm wake in myself, and my heart's broke with the 
hunger." " Oh, then, won't your ladyship buy a dying woman's 
prayers — chape ? " 

At the time of which I write, the poor, if they would live, were 
compelled to beg. The destitute condition of the very poor in Ire- 
land had been for centuries a reproach to the Legislature ; but, al- 
though the state made no provision for the aged and incapable of 
labor, the tax of their maintenance had been always a grievous tax 
on the country — pressing not the less heavily because it was volun- 
tary — for it fell upon the generous and released the mercenary — 
being levied to a considerable extent on the classes only a degree 
removed from the destitution they relieved. 

Although beggars are still encountered, as they will be every- 
where, they are not the frightful nuisances they used to be, when 
34 



53° 



IRISH BEGGARS. 



towns and villages swarmed with them. What else but beg could 
the poverty-stricken do ? The most attractive scenes in Ireland 
were usually the most infested with the plague. At Killarney, the 
evil was frightful : beggars swarmed at every point where tourists 
were expected to stop. The moment the car halted, it was sur- 
rounded by what might be termed an animated mass of disease, in- 
firmity, and dirt, that disgusted the fastidious, and filled nervous 
people with fears of infection. In fact, the Irish beggar had been, 
time out of mind, one of the chief impediments to intercourse be- 
tween England and Ireland ; presenting sights that made humanity 
shudder. The misery witnessed, and the discomfort endured, were 
but partially compensated by the often touching eloquence of the 
appeals made, and the genuine bursts of wit that would have elicited 
applause and laughter had they come from other sources. That 
sort of beggar is entirely gone. The police would soon put in du- 
rance him or her who plied such a trade now. They must be 
searched for in the pages of Carleton and other writers. There are 
not many now living old enough to have met them at Lough Dearg 
and the other holy wells of which they were the pests and the 
oracles. 

I must again remind the reader that my anecdotes of this descrip- 
tion are mainly derived from the past. He will travel through the 
country now without meeting a score of professional beggars. Be 
sure, then, that those who beg will be in sore need. 

The language in which they framed their petitions was always 
pointed, forcible, and generally highly poetic. I remember a woman 
with a huge mass of red hair ; some one called out to her " Foxy 
head, foxy head." " Yah ! " said she " that ye may never see the 
dyer!" I was traveling outside a stage-coach, and while we were 
changing horses at Naas where, it was said, the " native beggars ex- 
ceeded the population," a persevering beggar was asking for pennies ; 
one irate inside passenger hastily drew up the window telling her to 

go to . I shall never forget the inimitable humor of her look 

and manner as she said, " Ah, then, it's a long journey yer honor is 
sending us ; may be ye're going to give us something to pay our ex- 
penses on the road." 

To beg was in truth a business : there was first the beggar by 
profession, often a strong and sturdy fellow, able, but not willing, to 
work, having pride rather than shame in the calling he had taken up. 
Such sturdy mendicants were to be counted, not by hundreds, but 
thousands, and were of both sexes ; the occupation was chiefly that 
of men. This kind of beggar was usually a wit, full of sly, and even 
wicked, humor ; pandering to vice ; the running medium of scandal ; 
the worker of mischief in families ; a gross flatterer where he ex- 
pected alms ; a pretender to religion ; a devotee and a canting up- 
holder of his Church ; a quack, who pretended to cure ailments ; 
often a seller of " bades " ; a haunter of the chapel-door ; and gen- 



IRISH WIT. 



531 



erally, though less for love than fear, a welcomed guest at the tables 
of well-to-do farmers, as well as at the hearth of the peasant. 

It was a common course, when harvest-time approached, for a 
man to make his way to England, and send his wife and children 
out "on the road," that is to beg, until he returned with the money 
he had gathered by his labor, paid the rent, and so insured shelter 
for another year. He had worked and lived miserably ; saving all 
he could ; remembering the home claims, he grudged himself a single 
luxury ; often resorting to mean and discreditable shifts to earn, or 
rather to prevent the spending of, a penny.* 

It is not tradition of a very remote past, that which relates how, 
at the pass between Cork and Kerry counties, the agents of the land- 
lords, at certain seasons, awaited the home-coming of beggars and 
took from them the moneys they had gathered — thus securing the 
payment of their rents ; I can credit a story I was told of an agent 
who received so many rents in pennies and half-pennies, that the 
horse he rode was unable to carry the load. 

Yes ! the Irish beggars are far-off memories ; a part of old Ire- 
land, that the remodeled Ireland of those days has forgotten. The 
Poor Law provides for the very poor ; and although it was at first 
bitterly and indignantly opposed, the immense benefits wrought to 
the country by the introduction of the system have gradually made 
themselves felt and silenced clamor, while the improvement of such 
portions of it as were found to work badly, removed objections that 
had ground in reason. f 

* In illustration of this custom I recall an incident. On board a packet from 
Bristol to Cork there were a number of Irish laborers homeward bound. When the 
captain was gathering his fares, one fellow protested he had not the money, or any 
money. He was searched, but none was found. The captain said he would have 
his coat, a bundle of rags that had been taken from his back ; looking at it with 
loathing he suddenly jerked it overboard. The deck rang with the scream that 
followed the act. The agony of the man was so great that one of the passengers 
said he should have another coat. It was then discovered that sewed up in his 
wretched jacket were sundry pound-notes which he was taking home to the 
" grawls." The man was rightly punished for his duplicity ; but his utter misery 
was a sight I have not forgotten, though it was sixty years ago. 

f When last I was in Ireland I heard but one new story. It illustrates the old 
characteristic of the ready wit of the Irish. Two boys were sleeping together ; one 
was Catholic, the other Protestant. When they woke in the morning the latter 
thought to get a rise of the former. " Oh ! " said the one, " I had a horrid drame 
last night." " Well, tell it to us," said the other. " Well, I will," said the Protes- 
tant boy. " Ye see, I dramed that I saw Purgathory opened, and all the Papists 
fell down into hell." "Och, murder !" exclaimed the Catholic boy, "the poor 
Protestants — won't thev be crushed! " 

This story was told me by Mr. Raffles, the stipendiary magistrate at Liverpool : 
Paddy Mallowney was brought before him and ordered to pay five shillings for 
being drunk and disorderly. " Pay five shillings for being drunk ! " he exclaimed. 
" Och ! the divil a five shillings ye'll git out of me." " Very well," said the magis- 
trate ; " take him to prison for seven days." " Is it take me to prison — barring I 
pay the five shillings ? " deliberately counting them one by one, and he said, " there 



532 REPEAL THE UNION! 

There are now no towns, and few villages, that are without dis- 
pensaries, and not many districts without a diploma'd doctor. 
Sixty years ago medical and surgical practitioners in out-of-the-way 
quarters were " fancy men " and " bone-setters " — man, or horse, or 
cow were patients alike. The class is now extinct in Ireland ; but 
half a century back such was the medical administrator and surgical 
operator for a score of miles round. 

Repeal of the Union. — "Repeal the Union — Restore the 
Heptarchy ! " The sentence was uttered by George Canning more 
than half a century ago. " It is madness," said Sir Robert Peel, in 
1830, "to attempt to sever the Union." These are the words of 
Lord Althorp : I sincerely hope that the object of those who are 
in favor of the Repeal of the Union will not succeed ; and knowing 
that they can not succeed, except by successful war, I must say that 
though no man is more averse from war, and particularly a civil war, 
than I am, yet I must confess that to me even civil war would be 
preferable to the disembodiment and destruction of the empire." 
And this passage is quoted from a speech by Macaulay ; comment- 
ing on O'Connell's demand for Repeal in 1833: "Copious as his 
vocabulary is, he will not easily find in it any foul name that has not 
been many times applied to those who sit around me, on account of 
the zeal and steadiness with which they supported the emancipation 
of the Roman Catholics. His reproaches are not more stinging than 
the reproaches which, in times not very remote, were endured un- 

they are, yer worship, and now I'll trouble ye for mee resate." " Oh, we never 
give receipts here." " Och ! the divil a bit o' me 'ill pay the money without a re- 
sate," he answered, as he gathered the shillings together. But as he was about to 
be removed by the tipstaff, he took wit in his anger, restored them, and was about 
to withdraw, when the magistrate, tickled, said, "Now, my man, tell me what you 
want of a receipt — what's your motive for seeking one ? " " Well, I'll tell yer wor- 
ship," answered Paddy. "Ye see yer worship when I go up to take mee trial 
there'll be St. Peter there, and he'll say to me, Paddy Mallowney, he'll say, we're 




_ your 

coat-pocket, every one, barring one. And he'll say to me, Paddy Mallowney, ye 
must go and get us that one, for we can't let ye in widout it ; and a mighty incon- 
venient thing it 'ud be to me, your worship, to be going down below, looking for 
yer worship to get mee resate." 

Not long ago this incident took place in Kensington, where the "pro-Cathe- 
dral " was in process of erection. A man was busily making mortar ; a gentleman 
passed by and addressed him : " What are you building there ? " "A church, yer 
honor." "Oh, a church ; of what denomination?" "Of no denomination at all, 
yer honor ; it's a holy Roman Catholic Church." " I'm very sorry to hear it." 
" Yes, sir, that's what the devil says," said Paddy as he resumed his work. 

I doubt if a traveler who journeyed from the Giant's Causeway to Cape Clear 
would pick up a dozen new anecdotes ; while half a century ago, it would have 
been a barren harvest that did not yield a hundred. 



THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 



533 



flinchingly in his cause. Those who faced the cry of ' No Popery ' 
are not here to be scared by the cry of ' Repeal.' " 

There has not been a statesman in England since the year 1800 
who has not declared Repeal of the Union to be as utterly out of 
consideration as would be a solemn proposal to erase from the stat- 
ute-book the Habeas Corpus Act. 

Sordid as were the means by which the consent of the Irish Par- 
liament to its own extinction was secured, the measure has been pro- 
ductive of incalculable benefit — not to England alone, but in a still 
greater degree to Ireland. 

The Bill for the Union was read a third time and passed on the 
10th of June, 1800, and received the Royal assent on the 1st of Au- 
gust in that year. Nobody questioned that Ireland had been bought 
and sold ; but if those who bought it were English, those who sold 
it were Irish. That outspoken member of the Hibernian Parliament 
who " thanked God he had a country to sell," only gave expression 
to the secret sentiments of a majority of his colleagues. Lord Cas- 
tlereagh, the English "Commissioner," came to Dublin on his mis- 
sion of " Union," armed with golden weapons that proved irresistible 
to the patriots of the Parliament House. 

It was Grattan's prophecy that Ireland would be revenged on 
•England for the Union by sending eighty " rapscallions " to the Im- 
perial Parliament. How many installments of the debt have been 
paid between the year 1800 and the year 1883 ? 

There is abundant evidence that the Union was, from the first, 
to Ireland a gain and not a loss. But what is the worth of evidence 
to those who will not hear it, or are predetermined to reject it ? But 
the Irish Parliament was no more a national Parliament than the 
Irish Church was a national Church. Both were exclusively Prot- 
estant. 

In 1 831 a " declaration " was issued, signed by a very large num- 
ber of the leading noblemen and gentlemen of Ireland, concerning 
the political discussions upon the question of a Repeal of the Legis- 
lative Union of Great Britain and Ireland ; it contained this com- 
prehensive passage : 

" We are of opinion that such repeal is a measure totally impracticable, 
and we are convinced that the agitation of it is peculiarly injurious to the 
prosperity of Ireland by diminishing that public confidence in her tranquillity 
without which it is vain to expect that capital or enterprise can largely or 
beneficially be directed to the cultivation of her resources and the profitable 
employment of her people." 

It was signed by Roman Catholics as well as Protestants : indeed, 
the document was prepared by one of the then most prominent of 
the Roman Catholic leaders — Pearce Mahony. The Orange Society 
drew up a document to the same effect. 

It was true in 1831, it is true in 1883, that the agitation for Repeal 



534 THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. 

has frightfully retarded the progress of the country. The vain pur- 
suit of a shadow, while the substance of national prosperity is neg- 
lected, has been a blight to Ireland even more disastrous than the 
potato famine of 1847. 

Although, as I have shown, the present agitation for Home Rule 
is by no means parallel with that of the last century, it will not come 
amiss to inquire here what sort of Parliament Ireland had previous 
to the Union. 

Lord Russell said that the Irish Parliament was " chiefly remark- 
able for intolerance and corruption." 

Of three hundred members of the Irish House of Commons two 
hundred were the nominees of private persons — peers or commoners 
— and forty of these members represented constituencies varying in 
number from one to twelve "voters."* 

Both Houses of Parliament were hot-beds of corruption. The 
few really sincere and honest politicians in them were lost among a 
crowd of venal upholders of the Government of the day, and of 
equally venal opponents to it, whose noisy pretenses of patriotism 
could always be silenced when necessary by similar arguments to 
those that converted so many patriots on the occasion of the Union. 

When, on the 5th of June, 1800, Grattan's motion for an address 
to the King protesting against the Union was negatived by 135 votes 
to 77, the majority of the supporters of the Government had sold 
their votes as distinctly and directly as the electors for their respect- 
ive boroughs sold theirs. 

Such was the Irish Protestant Parliament of last century. Who 
can doubt that a Dublin Parliament of to-day would speedily pre- 
sent a spectacle of even more hopeless anarchy? Two hundred 
years ago, the appeal of James II to the native Irish called, for a 
short time, an assembly of Irish Catholics into power. That " sen- 
ate " was speedily scattered by the crushing overthrow of James, 
but it had sat long enough to give evidence of its total incapacity to 
govern. The edicts it issued were alternately calculated to provoke 
the rage of the Protestants and their derision. Who can doubt that, 
in these particulars, history would repeat itself — that a Home Rule 
Parliament would combine insult to England with incapacity for do- 
mestic legislation ? And what would be the end of the perilous 
experiment ? Either that Ireland would have to be bribed into sur- 
rendering the privilege of making laws for herself, as in 1800, or 

* One example will suffice. Bannow sent two members to Parliament. There 
was no dwelling better than a hovel in the " borough." A dilapidated chimney in 
the churchyard indicates where a house had been ; seated upon its bricks and 
stones the " representatives " were returned. The chimney yet remains. I have 
stood upon it often. It is one of the few relics of the Irish Herculaneum ; a town 
swallowed up by sea-sand ; but there is not even tradition to describe it ; all the 
evidence of its existence is a list of some streets, with their inhabitants, preserved 
among old records in the city of Waterford. 



CIVIL WAR. 



535 



conquered again as in 1649 and 1689 — some would add, as in 1798, 
If ever Irish clamor should succeed (but that is incredible) in ob- 
taining Repeal of the Union, those who have labored to that end 
will have called down on their country, not a blessing, but a curse. 

In November, 1843, 1 published a letter on the subject of Repeal 
addressed to Irish Temperance Societies, included in which societies 
were at that time two thirds of the Irish people.* 

What I wrote thirty-five years ago is as directly applicable now 
as it was then. Repeal is as much an impossibility now as then. 
Mr. Butt knew it, as did O'Connell ; Mr. Parnell knows it as well 
as did either of his predecessors. 

It could be obtained only at the cost of a civil war ; the most 
powerful nation in the world opposed to a people ill-supplied with 
the means of making war, divided and subdivided in interests, in 
affinities, in race, in blood, with a strong and determined adversary 
in their very midst — the Protestant who can not forget the warnings 
he received in 1798. 

Yes ; " Repealers " know Repeal to be an impossibility,! that 
England would " rise as one man " to prevent it — to prevent Ireland 
from being given over to one part of the Irish — the part infinitely 
the least capable of self-government. They know well that Repeal, 
however much it might injure England, would utterly ruin Ireland ; 
they know more than that : they know that civil war would be the 
inevitable result of Repeal, that — as in 1641, in 1688, and in 1798 — 
there would be frightful massacres ; but they know also that, even 
if England were to look calmly and indifferently on the struggle, not 
sending a single soldier to aid " its own " in a war between the 
Protestants and Roman Catholics, the Protestants would triumph ; 

* The letter had the fate of all attempts to steer a middle course between par- 
ties in Ireland. It gave offense to both the Liberal Catholic party I desired to 
conciliate, and the Protestant Conservative party with which surely I was allied. 
It led to a hostile message to me from Charles Lever, the then editor of the Dublin 
University Magazine, who had assailed me as a person " hired" to do the work. I 
was indignant, and replied — certainly with bitterness. We were both soldiers of 
the pen, and it was the only weapon with which we ought to have fought ; Mr. 
Lever did not think so, but came over to London, and, in the parlance of the time, 
" called me out." Fortunately, we had sensible " friends" who saw the absurdity 
of a duel between two men of letters. While they discussed the affair at Chalk 
Farm, Mr. Lever was in one house and I in another close at hand waiting their 
decision. 

The marvelous peace-maker, if settled the affair. If the offensive term had 
not been applied to me, I should not have written the offensive letter. The one 
was " withdrawn" and the other was "withdrawn." Mr. Lever and I never met, 
either metaphorically or literally. I went home, he returned to Dublin, and so 
the affair ended ; the present Lord Ranelagh saying pleasantly to my friend Colonel 
Clarke, as they two were homeward bound, " he believed it was the first time three 
Irishmen had met to kill one Englishman — and didn't do it." 

f O'Connell, in 1843, declared that the Repeal of the Union " could not be de- 
layed longer than eight or ten months, when your country shall be a nation once 
more," and added, " believe me who never deceived you ! " » 



536 EMIGRATION. 

the numbers would be, indeed, one against four (not as it was in 
'98, one against seven), but the one would be well fed, well armed, 
well clothed, well disciplined, well led, while the four would be a 
rabble destitute of all these guarantees of victory.* 

I can not close this chapter better than by quoting the words of 
Macaulay, uttered in the House of Commons in 1833. Having 
stated he was prepared to show that Repeal of the Union would not 
remove the political and social evils that afflict Ireland, but that it 
would aggravate every one of those evils, he added, " For my part 
/ should prefer the total separation which the honorable and learned gen- 
tleman (O' Connell ) prof esses to consider a calamity to partial separation, 
which he has taught his countrymen to consider as a blessing" 

Emigration. — In the twenty-two years prior to 1871, 2,670,664 
Irish people emigrated from Ireland, and in 1880, 95,800. Possibly, 
however, the famine period, which began in 1845, may have had 
something to do with the large exodus of the earlier years. For in 
1851 there were over 250,000 paupers in the workhouses through- 
out the country, whereas in 1861 the number was but 50,010, and in 
187 1 only 48,000. Of the emigrants in 1880 seventy-five per cent 
were between fifteen and thirty-five, fourteen per cent under fifteen, 
and only ten per cent over thirty-five years of age. How greatly 
emigration has affected the population is shown by the fact that in 
1 82 1 the number of people in Ireland was, roughly speaking, 
6,800,000, whereas in 1881 it was but 5,160,000, there having been 
a decrease of over four per cent during the past ten years. Between 
1841 and 185 1, however, nineteen persons in every hundred, or 
nearly one fifth, left the country, f 

* Milo McCaskey, one of the generals of the Pope, said in a warning letter to 
O'Donovan Rossa : " If it ever came to a fight, four thousand regular troops in Ire- 
land will rout fifty thousand of your undisciplined rabble. In all that you see 
strength, I see weakness ; and where you read power, force, resource, and victory, 
I only infer debility, dissension, and defeat. Out of such miserable materials you 
think to make an army — you might as well stock a jeweler's shop with paving- 
stones, and tell him to make rings and bracelets of them. Tell me, if you can, 
what popular rising ever made even a decent stand where the men of station held 
aloof and refused their assistance to it ? Irish Republicanism ! Do you not know 
that respect of rank, and especially for the rank that is associated with ancient 
blood, is among the most cherished feelings of all Irishmen ? You want to put in 
the place of your priests a gin-juleper from New York, or a tailor from Dame 
Street. The gallows or the hulks is a smart price to pay for a drill in the dark, or 
the possession of a Federal uniform and a six-shooter. I have no desire to grace 
the dock of Cashel or Tralee, and I decline the command of an army that does not 
exist, and which will only muster to be hanged or transported." The letter from 
Milo McCaskey is dated from Rome in October, 1865, and was found by the police 
in searching the lodgings of O'Donovan Rossa. 

\ The number of emigrants who left Irish ports in 1881 was 78,719, the num- 
ber of males being 40,317, and of females, 38,402. Of the 78,719 emigrants in 
1881, 78,417 were natives of Ireland, and 302 were persons belonging to other 
countries. Of the 78,417 persons — natives of Ireland — who left in 1881, 16,232 



RAIL WA VS. 



537 



On this important subject I offer no remarks ; satisfied with 
merely giving " Returns," except that I fully coincide with the view 
taken by " An Ulster Farmer," writing to the Times in 1881 : " There 
is but one escape for the Irish peasant, and that is to carry him 
where land is a drug and labor at a premium." The subject must, 
ere long, find its way to the front. Emigration and immigration 
(the infusion of new and healthy blood into the body politic) would 
do that which I believe may be done — place Ireland on a par with 
England in all that produces contentment, prosperity, and happiness. 

Railways. — One of the earliest passages in our work — " Ireland, 
its Scenery and Character," 1840 — is this : "In Ireland there are no 
railways." It is needless to dwell on the disadvantages that hence 
arose. How is it now ? Let us compare the present with the past 
as regards this immense power over all the ramifications of life. 

The first railway in Ireland, that from Dublin to Kingstown (six 
miles), was opened in December, 1834, and it was for some years 
the only one in the country. In 1849, however, several others had 
been made, there being then 428 miles open, and the receipts that 
year for goods and passengers being ^"418,066, the passengers hav- 
ing numbered six million. Ten years afterward, 1,265 m iles had 
been opened, and in 1859 the receipts were ^1,296,063. In 1869 
the receipts had increased to ^2,260,000, and the length open was 
1,975 m iles. In 1880 the mileage was 2,370, the revenue was 
^2,262, 619, and the number of passengers carried in the year was 
over sixteen million, with twenty-one thousand season-ticket hold- 
ers. The average cost of these lines in Ireland has been ^16,000 
per mile, and it is stated that the capital held by resident proprietors 
is about seventeen millions. Several new lines have recently been 
finished and opened, and others are in course of formation.* 

The printing-press, with its enormous increase of power during 
the last forty or fifty years, has done literally nothing to aid and 
advance progress in Ireland. Forty or fifty years ago, so few of the 

were from Leinster ; 21,752 from Munster ; 24,101 from Ulster; and 16,332 from 
Connaught, the total number being equal to 15.2 per 1,000 of the population of 
Ireland in 1881. 

The total number of emigrants, natives of Ireland, who left the Irish ports 
from the 1st of May, 185 1 (the date at which the collection of these returns com- 
menced), to the 31st of December, 1881, is 2,715,604 — 1,446,582 males and 1,269,022 
females. Munster contributed 939,092 persons ; Ulster, 802,649 ; Connaught, 
352,792 ; and Leinster, 510,403. It appears that 76.0 per cent of the persons who 
left Ireland in 1881 were between the ages of fifteen and thirty-five years, the per- 
centage over that age being 9.3, and of children under fifteen years 14.7. 

* The usual lack of business habits in Ireland is, I fear, the curse of the rail- 
road, as in more important matters. I send generally thrice a year a large package 
to " Kenmare, via Cork or Waterford." It rarely arrives at its destination under 
ten days — as long a time as it would take to transmit it to New York. The last 
package I sent — in 1883 — had not arrived at the end of twelve days. 



538 THE PRINTING-PRESS. 

" common people " could read — according to Mr. A. M. Sullivan, 
there are now as few who can not read — that efforts to produce suita- 
ble literature for them would have been futile. But, even then, such 
publications as those of " Martin Doyle " (my friend the late Rev. 
William Hickey), on agriculture and kindred topics, had a large circu- 
lation, and by no means exclusively among cultivated classes. 

It is true, we have now the railway book-stalls of " W. H. Smith 
& Son " in towns where formerly there was not a book to be had 
" for love or money " ; but the Stations are not often visited by men 
or women of the peasant class, nor are the books found there such as 
are likely to be appreciated and valued by them. Moreover, there is 
sometimes the certainty, and always the dread, that the cheap sheets 
they might purchase will contain something hostile to their faith, and 
prejudicial to what they consider their interests ; while, as importa- 
tions from England, they are met, on the threshold, by a greeting of 
— unwelcome. 

While it is undoubtedly true that some well-meaning and, it may 
be, well-intentioned, societies, work solely with this view — making 
instruction subordinate to proselytizing j ostentatiously caring more for 
the " souls " than they do for the bodies and minds of those to whose 
" needs " they profess to minister. Such was always the curse that 
crept into literature intended for the Irish people — the production 
of pamphlets and books that never were read, never could have been 
read, by one out of a thousand who were desired to be readers. 

I am strongly of opinion that if cheap and good books, pointing 
out many of the changes that have taken place, explaining others 
that may be made or are in progress, manifesting the blessings of 
tranquillity, and exhibiting the virtues of social life, were circulated 
among the peasantry, they would be accepted and read. They might 
be subtle, but by no means delusive — there is no human being so 
hard to deceive as an Irishman. Especially they must touch upon 
no points calculated to excite alarm, on the ground of either religion, 
politics, or rights, real or presumed. Surely there are prudent, wise, 
and good men who might devise such a series as — while risking no 
offense, stirring up no suspicion, disturbing no rational prejudice — 
might work its way among the people as antidotes to the fatal poison 
they now greedily take — most of it foul and evil, thoroughly atro- 
cious importations from the United States of America. 

I have no doubt whatever that such a series might be devised as 
would obtain the sanction of the Cardinal- Archbishop, several of the 
bishops, and a large proportion of the clergy of the Catholic Church 
— while receiving the approval of those of the Protestant Church. 
It would not be easy to produce such a series. I am fully aware of 
that ; but it may be done, taking especial care that every question- 
able topic is carefully excluded, that the subjects treated be, as far 
as possible, interesting as well as instructive — and involving no fear 
that the writers and editors have given thought, directly or indirectly, 



IRISH PATRIOTS. 



539 



to "conversion." I repeat, it would be a task of much delicacy 
and some difficulty ; but it may be done, and national money, spent 
to do it, would be wisely and profitably spent.* 

Will any person obtain information — not difficult to obtain — as to 
how many mayors and how many town councilors, being Roman 
Catholics, represent in corporate bodies the several cities and towns 
of Ireland ? To contrast the returns of the present with those of the 
past, when — some forty years ago — the seven millions of Irish Roman 
Catholics were represented by one person — Major Bryan, of Kilkenny, 
a popular gentleman, well known and largely appreciated — not as a 
politician, but as a performer in amateur plays ! I leave others to 
comment on the change from then to now. 

Does it ever occur to Irish " patriots " that if " Boycotting " is 
found to answer in Ireland, it may be resorted to in England ; that 
— if the million of Irishmen employed in that part of the Queen's 
dominions, Irish emigrants to the sister country, where they receive 
good wages, good food, good raiment, good treatment, as truly and 
as fully as English workmen of their grade do, or can, obtain, the 
same measure of liberty being accorded to the one as can be enjoyed 
by the other — there may come a day when the master-builders, the 
merchants, and mill-owners of England may restore to newspapers 
the long rejected and condemned paragraph, " No Irish need apply! " 

I have said before, and I repeat, that the teaching is infamously 
wicked which tells the people of Ireland to rejoice at any evil or 
misfortune that may befall England, on the ground that " England's 
extremity is Ireland's opportunity " — that the English and the Irish 
can not, and ought not, to mingle any more than oil with water. The 
propagators of such doctrines are not only the foes of England : 
they are the worst enemies of Ireland. Their teaching, while preg- 
nant with incalculable evils to both nations, has brought down in the 
past, and must again bring down in the future, if listened to, infi- 
nitely more terrible mischiefs on the weaker than on the stronger 
country. 

It is one way of serving Ireland — the way counseled at Wicklow 
in December, 1882 — that "patriots" should be surrounded (?) by 
" fighting-men," " serried phalanxes," whose properties were taken 
from them " seven hundred years ago " (I quote the speaker, one of 
the " rapscallions " sent to the Imperial Parliament in revenge for 
the Union of eighty-three years back — with whom Grattan threatened 

* Some years ago Mrs. Hall published a little book (Partridge & Co.) entitled 
" God save the Green ! " It was a kindly and affectionate address to the men and 
women of her country : full of anecdote, and valuable as presenting a contrast 
between the present and the past ; but not such as I should advise in a series I 
contemplate and presume to recommend. 



54Q 



LORD O'HAGAN'S VIEW. 



us in 1800). But the " fighting-men " would not be all on one side ; 
there are those — not in the " Black North " only, but in all parts of 
Ireland, who protest against such teaching — none the less wicked 
because it infers insanity. (I quote from the Times, January 1, 1883): 

" They proclaim hatred of English rule and law, to brand with infamy and 
hold up to execration the loyalists who are true to the Crown and union of the 
two countries, and to preach a crusade against property, inflaming the pas- 
sions and exciting the cupidity of the populace." 

Evil men they are who teach to a credulous people the evil doc- 
trine of what they term " felonious landlordism " — which in so many 
instances means persons buying land and paying for it, using it not 
for their own benefit alone, but for the interest of all, of every class 
— that it is to be " eradicated " by teachings and bowie-knives im- 
ported from the United States of America, openly advocated by 
men who are no more Irish than are the existing leaders, a large 
proportion of whom are merely " Hibernes ipsis Hiberniores," which 
a high authority pronounces to designate "Anglo-Normans and 
Anglo-Saxons sunk into savages." There are plenty of Anglo- 
Normans and Anglo-Saxons now, who, if not themselves "sunk 
into savages," patronize, comfort, encourage, and aid those who are. 

These memorable words are the words of Lord Aberdare : 

" I have striven to show, not with the poor aim of exalting the present 
over the past, but with the just object of inspiring hope and courage and 
perseverance by pointing to victories already won, and conquests which may 
yet be made. . . . We have received from those who immediately preceded 
us a world much better than they found it. Let it not be our fault if we do 
not transmit it to our successors improved, purified, and invigorated." 

On the subject of the changes that have given good government 
to Ireland in the place of bad, let me, before I close this chapter, 
cite the evidence of Lord O'Hagan, an Irish Roman Catholic, who 
has been — to his own honor, and greatly to the content of the Brit- 
ish people of all religions, all parties, and all grades — Lord High 
Chancellor of Ireland. 

At the Social Science Congress in Dublin (1881) the noble lord 
delivered an address dealing with a period of Irish history much less 
remote and infinitely less oppressive than that to which I have taken 
my readers back. He contrasted the present with that comparatively 
recent past, and drew from the reforms of abuses he enumerated a 
cheering augury for the future. I copy from the Times a portion of 
an article commenting on his speech : 

" Lord O'Hagan's claim for his countrymen is of having made ' steps of 
real and cheering progress, improvements permanently conquered from the 
past, and auspicious, as they will be fruitful, of a happier future.' Twenty- 
one years back the judicial bench was crowded, and suitors waited long years 
before they could gain a hearing. In criminal cases juries were ostentatiously 
packed. Towns large and small were abandoned to untempered squalor and 



LORD O'HAGAN'S VIEW. 



541 



filth. The stranger wondered as much in Dublin and Cork as in the poorest 
village how pestilence could fail to be chronic. . . . Jobbery and waste and 
universal recklessness, which once distinguished everything Irish, have been 
retrenched, if not abolished. The materials for resting national life on a 
sound basis hardly existed in Irish institutions at the date from which Lord 
O'Hagan commences his reminiscences.' At present the structure for secur- 
ing public order is practically as complete in Ireland as it is in England. 

" Lord O'Hagan can quote chapter and verse for his catalogue of ' amended 
laws, cheap and facile justice, education liberal, unconditioned, and available 
to all ; the enforcement of the crowning virtue of a Christian civilization by 
sheltering the friendless child, and watching over the unhappy lunatic, free 
and equal exercise of the rights of conscience, increased provision for the 
national health and comfort, and security in his possessions and encourage- 
ment to the tiller of the soil.' Ireland, within a short generation, has ad- 
vanced along all these lines of national amelioration." 

It was an Irish member of Parliament, Mr. Mulholland, who said 
this : 

" The fact is that the spring forward which Ireland made when she was 
admitted to a free partnership with England was surprising. The people in 
their habits, their dress, and their food, had since that period shown the most 
extraordinary advance ever made by any country in the world." 

I quote the yet more forcible language of another member, Mr. 
A. M. Sullivan. Referring to hereditary and instinctive "hatred 
and aversion," he describes himself as one who had been nurtured 
under the influence of that feeling, but he adds, " as he approached 
manhood and had opportunities of becoming acquainted with the 
great and noble characteristics of the English character, he looked 
back with intense regret upon the unreasoning hatred in which he 
had grown up from the days of his youth." 

I again quote Lord O'Hagan : 

" There is no reason why the North and the South should not emulate 
each other in doing homage to the magnanimous endurance of Limerick and 
Derry, and associate in honor the gallant clergyman who held the maiden 
city against all comers, and the noble exile who caught up the life-blood 
welling from his heart, in a foreign quarrel on a foreign field, and murmured 
with his latest breath, ' Would that this were for Ireland ! ' " 

Thus far Irish testimony. Let me, in quitting the subject, sub- 
join the words in which on the 30th of June, 1876, a distinguished 
Englishman, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, then Irish Secretary, summed 
up the changes that had placed the Ireland of to-day in a very dif- 
ferent position from the Ireland of half a century ago : 

" Seventy-six years ago, when Dublin was a week or more distant from 
Holyhead, when railways and telegraphs were unknown, when communica- 
tion from Dublin with the South or North of Ireland took as long as it did 
now with Egypt, when as far as regarded facilities of communication with 
the Government, Ireland was as far from London as Calcutta was now, then 
Parliament and the country abolished the separate Parliament of Ireland. 
What had those seventy-six years produced ? Increased prosperity in Ire- 



542 



SCOTLAND AS IT WAS. 



land, all those facilities of communication of which he had spoken, common 
interests in banking, railways,* and every kind of trade and commerce be- 
tween England, Scotland, and Ireland, and more than that, an emigration of 
more than three quarters of a million of Irishmen now resident in England ; 
and yet in the face of those facts honorable gentlemen propose to us to accept 
an anachronism." 

I quote the passages that follow from Dr. Macaulay's " Ireland 
in 1872," a small book written by an enlightened and liberal Scotch- 
man, who has viewed the intricate subject in all its bearings with 
sound discretion, great wisdom, and generous sympathy : 

" If half a century ago Ireland would have not only been willing to accept, 
but proud to assume the title of ' West Britain,' as Scotland has that of ' North 
Britain,' in addition to an ancient title, what a country of prosperity Ireland 
would ere this have become ! 

" The Highlanders of Scotland are as purely Celtic as the Irish : and were 
at no distant period in chronic rebellion against the Southerners. They are 
now the most loyal and orderly and exemplary of all the people under her 
Majesty's rule. 

" The same revolution has taken place in North Wales, where the hatred 
of England was as intense as in any part of Ireland." 

I quote also this passage from an article in the Daily Telegraph, 
November, 1882 : 

" All the causes that have for centuries tended to keep Irishmen apart 
from Englishmen were originally at work in Scotland itself. The measure 
of 1700 was as much hated in the north as the statute of 1800 by the Irish 
Catholics of the time. The Scottish Presbyterian detested Episcopacy and 
all its works quite as fiercely as the Catholic Irishman did the Protestantism 
of the English Church. . . . Central Scotland during this period was as poor 
and as lawless as the Ireland beyond the Pale at any peroid of its history. A 
description of the country and the people quoted by Sir Walter Scott has 
many points that make it resemble an account of the worst parts of Ireland. 
The writer says of the Highlands : ' There is no culture of ground, no im- 
provement of pastures, and, from the same reason, no manufactures, no trade 
— in short, no industry. The people are extremely prolific, and therefore so 
numerous that there is not business in that country according to its present 
order and economy for the one half of them. Every place is full of idle peo- 
ple, accustomed to arms, and lazy in everything but rapines and depredations. 
Here the laws have never been executed, nor the authority of the magistrate 
ever established. Here the officer of the law neither dare nor can execute 
his duty, and several places are about thirty miles from lawful persons. In 
short, here is no order, no authority, no government." ... By what magic 
has the country emerged from that condition to its present state ? Why is 
it now enabled to support a population probably sixfold what it maintained 

* Sir M. Hicks-Beach might have added that railways have not only united dis- 
tant localities, but they have liberalized the people, invading and scattering the 
narrow prejudices of provincialism, infusing in every direction new blood and social 
health and vigor, encouraging commercial relations, opening new markets and 
sources of industry to remote districts, and inculcating the necessity of a strict 
observance of " law and order," better than a whole century of unintelligible legis- 
lation. 



WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 543 

two centuries ago ? Why has Scottish prejudice against England and the 
Union died down ? Why have Englishmen ceased to treat Scotchmen with 
the rancorous contempt shown" faintly and half in jest in Johnson's constant 
gibes against Boswell ? The explanation is that Scotland has lifted itself 
from a condition as low as any in which Ireland has ever been placed by the 
exhibition of qualities we have yet to desire on Irish soil." — Daily Telegraph, 
jolh November, 1882. 

What does the awfully sad story of the Scottish " Covenanters " 
tell us ? Consult history, or the scarcely less reliable evidence of 
Scott and other writers of fiction — of their struggles for freedom of 
faith. They endured and suffered far more than the Irish had to 
endure and suffer in the very worst days of their persecution. They 
were hunted to death by ruthless destroyers ; butchered whenever 
they were " caught praying " to the God of love and mercy ; wor- 
shiping in caves and in mountain crevices, always with out-watchers 
— warning when to disperse. Whole counties were given up to be 
" harried " by a profligate soldiery ; infant children, child-bearing 
women, and white-headed men were victims of a cruel oppression, 
defended only upon the principle that it was crime to worship God 
contrary to rules laid down by a British Parliament, ratified by a 
Scottish Parliament. 

What were the slaughters of Oliver Cromwell at Drogheda and 
Wexford compared with those of " bloody Claverhouse " and his 
trained bands of butchers, of which we read with a shudder to-day, 
though perpetrated just two hundred years back ? Persecution " for 
righteousness' sake " was the curse of a long time ago ; it no more 
exists at the close of the nineteenth century than do the burnings of 
witches or the hangings for passing base coin. 

I have stated that in 1843 I printed a pamphlet concerning " Re- 
peal," which I addressed to the Temperance Societies of Ireland. 
It contained this passage, which, in 1883 — just forty years afterward 
— I repeat. It applies as forcibly now as it did then to the " patri- 
ots " who are crushing and, for the time, ruining their country : 

" But when the obstacles to the on-progress of Ireland were re- 
moved, what — I humbly ask — was the duty of your patriots ? What, 
in especial, was that of your great leader ? How much are you — the 
Irish people — the better for the removal of all civil and political dis- 
qualifications ? How much the better might you not have been if 
your leader had expended these thirteen years — since the great 
triumph to which alone he will be indebted for a place in history — 
these thirteen years in counseling, inducing, or compelling practical 
improvement of his country, instead of wasting his mighty energies, 
his wonderful talents, his indomitable perseverance, and his abundant 
resources, in agitating topics worse than useless, in striving after ob- 
jects unattainable, or mischievous if obtained ! Alas ! the history of 
the world supplies scarcely a stronger example of a man endowed 



544 INJUSTICE TO IRELAND. 

with almost unlimited power to do good effecting so very little. 
Where is the agricultural society of which he is a foremost and active 
member ? What scheme for draining bogs, fertilizing mountains, and 
reclaiming ' slobs,' has had the aid of his convincing eloquence ? 
Which of your thousand harbors has he converted into a profitable 
fishery ? Where are the mines he has explored ? What railway has 
been created under his fosterage ? Into what salutary channel has 
he directed the tide of emigration ? What factories have created 
trade, employment, and wealth — having the sanction of his name ? 
Where are the vessels his voice has chartered ? Which of your insti- 
tutions for promoting the arts of peace owes a debt to him ? In how 
many of your public charities has his name been heard ? Alas ! his 
course has been like that of one of the many rivers that run in all 
directions — west, east, north, and south — through the Evergreen 
Isle : angry and brawling, not producing and fertilizing ; possessing 
strength — any one of them — greater than that of the whole steam- 
force of Manchester, yet spending it all in wrangling with mountain 
stones. We see what it is and what it does — and know what it might 
be made to do. Ah ! if your great leader were to fall asleep — con- 
tinue sleeping for the next ten years, and then awaken to become a 
living witness of the changes these ten years might produce — con- 
trasting them with the ten years of misery, want, and agitation by 
which they had been preceded, I can conceive no repentance so bit- 
ter as his." 

Injustice to Ireland ! — The latest grievance is that an English 
company undertakes to carry to Dublin the mails for ^40,000 a year 
less than the sum paid to an Irish company for that service. 

I was, a few years ago, standing at a railway station in Liverpool 
when up ran a person saying, " I'm going to London ! " " Too late," 
said the station-master, " train's gone." " Why," exclaimed the 
person, looking at his watch, " it's not nine o'clock." "Ah, you've 
forgotten that our time is twenty - five minutes before yours ! " 
" Twenty-five minutes before ours ! Do you call that justice to Ire- 
land?" 

Once a gentleman bitterly complained to me of English maltreat- 
ment of Ireland. " They send us their coals and make us buy them 
— when we've plenty of our own in Kilkenny ! " 

" Bad luck to 'em, the Scottish nagurs," said the waiter at Galway 
when he served for dinner two salt haddocks, " they catch our fish 
and send 'em back to us — and make us pay for 'em ! " 

I was in court one day, when a stalwart fellow entered the wit- 
ness-box to prosecute for an assault another stalwart fellow who was 
in the dock. The lawyer saw he had a " character " to deal with, 
and thus addressed him : " Now, my fine fellow, what are you going 
to swear to ? " This was the answer : " Anything at all, be J — s — 
for satisfaction ! " 



WHAT IRELAND WAS. 545 

We had an Irish cook. Two Irish dealers supplied us with pota- 
toes ; one of them was jealous of the other, and tried to blarney- 
Kitty into giving him a preference. Upon her protesting that his 
rival gave as good potatoes as he did, " Ah, Katty, dear," said he, 
" can't ye spile 'em in the biling /" 

I have thus shown what Ireland was within my memory — what it 
continued, to a great extent, to be within the memories of many who 
are much younger than I am. While picturing the unhappy condi- 
tion of the country and people forty, fifty, or sixty years ago I have 
endeavored to show that England has been for many years striving 
to make amends to Ireland for centuries of mismanagement and mis- 
rule ; and I have pointed out that up to a comparatively recent 
period the odious and evil principle of religious tyranny was every- 
where the guide of nations, and that, as far as British subjects were 
concerned, Nonconformists and Jews had to endure persecutions 
similar to those that oppressed and enthralled the Roman Catholics 
of Great Britain and all its dependencies,* but especially of Ire- 
land, where the persecuted faith was that of the majority of the 
" nation." 

If I needed evidence to sustain my assertions that the nineteenth 
century has witnessed an entire change in England's policy toward 
Ireland, I could produce it in abundance ; evidence to prove that 
for many years connection with England has been an advantage to 
Ireland and the Irish people — to show that the old unwise and 
wicked policy of governing Ireland as an alien country has been en- 
tirely abrogated ; that the vile motto — " divide and conquer " — 
written in blood under the quarterings of the arms of the wedded 
countries, is at length worn out, and has been displaced by that of 
" conciliate and unite " ; that the atrocious principles which distin- 
guished a dark age and bad governments — which treated Ireland 
only as a conquered country — are now as intolerable to Englishmen 
as they ever were to Irishmen. 

Let me solemnly record my conviction that I may say for nine 
tenths of the English people — there are no rights, no privileges, no 
advantages to which Protestants and Englishmen are entitled, that 
they would not strive to obtain for Irishmen and Roman Catholics — 

* O'Connell, in one of his documents, gives a list of places in Ireland, " offices 
of trust, honor, and emolument," from which Roman Catholics were excluded previ- 
ous to the granting of Catholic Emancipation. The list, amounting to 30,400, in- 
cludes the Lord Chancellor, Master of the Rolls, Judges, Law Sergeants, King's 
Counsel, Mayors and all Corporate officials, all Ministers of State and their officials, 
and, of course, seats in the Houses of Parliament. 

It would be interesting to know how many of the 30,400 places are now filled 
by Roman Catholics. Probably much more than the half ; and let it be remem- 
bered that besides the late Lord Chancellor O'Hagan, eight out of twelve judges are 
Roman Catholics. 

35 



546 IRELAND— AS IT HAS BEEN. 

if they have them not. That is mere, simple, rational justice — which, 
infinitely more than mercy — 

" Blesseth him that gives and him that takes." 

I may fittingly append to the above some striking words from one 
of many letters published in the English Press, written by the excel- 
lent and estimable Duchess of Marlborough, to whom Ireland owes 
a large debt for valuable services during a heavy visitation of misery, 
yet larger debt for sympathy and affection : 

" I write in order that you should know that England loves Ireland, 
and is ever ready to help her in her hour of need!' 

These evil men — the veritable foes of Ireland — know 
that in no country of the world, dating from the remotest 
periods of recorded time, have there been so many privileges 
given, so many rights restored, so many boons granted, as 
have been, during the last fifty years, accorded to ireland 
by the ruling country. 

Who despairs of Ireland ? Not I for one ! And I have known 
the country and its people well — for much more than sixty years. 

I do not apologize for the length to which I have carried these 
details. They may serve as records and guides when Ireland is in 
arts and manufactures, as well as civil and religious freedom, on a 
par with England — when she is competing with her in the race for 
the glory that is practical and useful — perhaps to arrive first at the 
goal. And that will be when the present accursed agitation has 
ceased ; it will not be long afterward, for many things are tending 
to a consummation so devoutly to be wished — when, in addition to 
their high natural qualities, the Irish will have acquired forethought, 
prudence, patience, charity, and continuous industry. 

Thus Edmund Spenser wrote in the sixteenth century : 

" And sure Ireland is a most sweet and beautiful country as any is under 
heaven, besides the soil itself most fertile, and fit to yield all kind of fruit that 
shall be committed thereunto." 

And thus, in the middle of the nineteenth century, wrote one of 
the wisest, kindliest, and best of the many travelers who have made 
Ireland the subject of close observation, continuous inquiry, and 
generous report — Campbell Foster : 

" I have been over every part of Great Britain ; I have had occasion to 
direct my attention to the natural capabilities, to the mode of cultivation, and 
to the produce of many parts of it. This very year I have traversed the 
country from the Land's End in Cornwall, to John o'Groat's in Caithness ; 
but in no part of it have I seen the natural capabilities of the soil and climate 
surpass those of Ireland, and in no part of it have I seen those natural capa- 
bilities more neglected, more uncultivated, more wasted than in Ireland." 



IRELAND— AS IT MAY BE. 



547 



Am I indulging in a vision — if I hazard this prophecy — as one 
that will be reality to the generation that succeeds the present ? I 
see in the prospect advantages to which those already obtained are 
but as dust in the balance : bigotry losing its hold ; the undue or 
baneful influence of one mind over another mind ceasing ; habits of 
thrift and forethought becoming constitutional ; industry receiving 
its full recompense ; cultivation passing over the bogs and up the 
mountains ; the law recognized as a guardian and a protector; the 
rights and duties of property fully understood and acknowledged ; 
the rich trusting the poor, and the poor confiding in the rich ; ab- 
senteeism no longer a weighty evil ; and capital circulating freely 
and securely, so as to render the great natural resources of Ireland 
available to the commercial, the agricultural, and the manufacturing 
interests of the United Kingdoms of England, Ireland, Wales, and 
Scotland ! 

It will be when the all-powerful arm of constitutional Law arrests 
in their course, and justly punishes, the evil and wicked men (it is 
with intense sorrow I add, and women also) who are curses of the 
country — moral and social pests, that blight the moral and social 
harvest. 

According to the evidence of the " informer," Robert Farrell, the 
" Society " of which he has been a member is " a complete delusion, 
that enables designing men to live on the people." He can not have 
referred to those who fatten on weekly four-pennies and twopence- 
halfpennies ; or rather, the residue of such " subscriptions," after 
" bowie-knives, revolvers, and breech-loaders " have been paid for. 
The commonest comprehension must understand him to mean their 
" Representatives " : among them being, certainly, some who flourish 
and have seats, not only in the Town Council of Dublin city — may- 
ors, aldermen, and town councilors — but in the Imperial Parliament; 
men, who, in the sight of God, are as guilty of the murders that dis- 
grace, degrade, and despoil Ireland, as are the acting assassins who 
stab with the steel, and shoot down with the revolver. They are as 
much of the " Inner Circle " as are the miscreants who do the actual 
work of assassination. 

While such men dictate to the Irish what they shall think, say, 
and do, we may as well expect to sow the wind and reap the whirl- 
wind, and gather the fruitage into garners, as to see Ireland " great, 
glorious, and free," while the hell-broth is brewed by those who are 
stirring the caldron. 



RECOLLECTIONS OF MRS. S. C. HALL. 

I must treat this subject briefly — briefly, that is to say, as com- 
pared with the space I might devote to it : for a thousand memories 
crowd upon me as I take up my pen — all of them happy, and sugges- 
tive of so much that was sweet, and bright, and good in her whose 
name consecrates these pages, that I may describe them as holy. Had 
I a volume to devote to the theme, I could fill it, with delight to my- 
self, and, I hope, with interest to my readers. But there is not space 
enough at my command to treat it otherwise than briefly and imper- 
fectly. Perhaps, when I am gone from earth, better justice may be 
done to it by the loving pen of some dear friend ; a biographer will 
have no difficulty in finding abundant materials. 

It is not easy for me to separate that which concerns her from 
that which belongs to me. We were so thoroughly one in all our 
pursuits, occupations, pleasures, and labors, never having been sep- 
arated for more than a month at a time, visiting together places either 
for enjoyment or business — to write about them : producing our 
books not in the same room, but always under the same roof, com- 
municating one with the other as to what should be or should not be 
done ; our friends the same, our habits the same — as nearly as they 
could be. It is no wonder that I find it difficult to separate her from 
me or me from her. I shall not try to do so. If I tried and suc- 
ceeded, it would be for the first time during our " mingled " life of 
more than fifty-six years. 

I pass over, with but slight reference, the birth of Anna Maria 
Fielding, in Anne Street, Dublin, on the 6th of January, 1800; her 
removal, when but a few weeks old, with her mother, to the seat of 
her mother's step-father, George Carr, Esq., of Graige, in the county 
of Wexford, in whose house she remained until her fifteenth year — 
his adopted daughter who was looked upon as his heiress.* 

* He died suddenly and left no will ; consequently, not being of his blood, Ma- 
ria inherited nothing. His nephew was his heir, but a very few years sufficed for 
him to squander an already involved property. No part of the estate is now owned 
by any one of his descendants ; yet the name of "Carr" is not obliterated in Wex- 
ford County. It is the name of several estimable men and women in New Ross, 
the descendants of a brother of George Carr. 



HER MOTHER. 



549 



From infancy to childhood she lived at Graige, under the watch- 
ful and loving care of her mother — one of the best women God ever 
made. I ought to know : for she lived with me for more than thirty 
years. I never saw evidence of wrong thought in her, or even of 
erring judgment. As to all that makes woman loving and beloved, 
the inscription I caused to be placed on the gravestone over her re- 
mains in Addlestone churchyard sufficiently indicates my estimate 
of her character : 

" Mrs. Sarah Elizabeth Fielding, the good and beloved mother of Mrs. S. 
C. Hall, died on the 20th of January, 1856, in the 83d year of her age. Her 
life was a long and cheerful preparation for death, and her whole pilgrimage 
a practical illustration of the text that was her frequent precept and continual 
guide, ' Keep innocency and take heed unto the thing that is right, for that 
shall bring a man peace at the last.' " 

She must have been very handsome when young ; she was so 
when old — beautiful with the beauty proper to age. Judged by 
women of her time, Mrs. Fielding was highly accomplished. She 
sang sweetly, drew prettily, wrote verse with more than grace, and 
French may be said to have been her native tongue. Very proud 
she was of her Huguenot descent, though dating back two genera- 
tions. Her mother and herself were of English birth ; but her grand- 
father had been one of the refugees from France after the revocation 
of the Edict of Nantes, and established a silk manufactory at Spital- 
fields. He was of illustrious birth and descent, of the family De 
Jaout (I am not sure that I spell the name correctly), in Renz en 
Champagne. Mrs. Fielding's grandfather was killed in the " Lord 
George Gordon riots." She has more than once described to me her 
sensations of horror when his body was brought to his home. 

Graige is on the sea-side, at Bannow, Wexford County, opposite 
to— 

" Bag and Bun, 
Where Ireland was lost and won " ; 

in other words, where Strongbow landed with his knights. Bannow, 
a peninsula that runs out into the sea, is the scene of nearly all Mrs. 
Hall's early sketches. She loved the district very dearly ; every 
association connected with it was vivid, and continued to be as truly 
a source of happiness up to her extreme old age as it had been in 
her early childhood. To the last, she dearly loved the sea. 

She drew this portrait of her childhood, in some introductory 
matter to her " Sketches of Irish Character," published in 1828 : 

" In the early morning, returning from my sea-bath, up the " long walk," 
lingering amid the old trees, or reading beside the stream in the domain, which 
encircled an ornamental cottage that was covered with ivy, and formed a very 
city of refuge for small birds, from the golden-crested wren to the overbearing 
starling, that cottage with its gable, its rustling ivy, its low dark windows, its 
mossy seats and grassy banks, and pure limpid stream creeping over the smooth 
pebbles after escaping from a cascade, which for years was my ideal of a 



550 



EARL Y LIFE A T BANNO W. 



waterfall, its mysterious arch, composed of the jawbone of a whale, which I 
used to gaze upon with such grave astonishment — that cottage was my para- 
dise ! I could hear the ocean rolling in the distance ; the refreshing sea- 
breeze, passing over fields of clover and banks of roses, was freighted with 
perfume. The parent birds would fearlessly pick up crumbs at my feet." 

A petted yet singularly unspoiled child she was in those days, loving 
all beautiful things even then, and making pets of all living objects 
that came in her way, from the dog to a spider.* A more admirable 
and valuable teacher than her mother, no child ever had. I loved 
that mother very dearly : and she as dearly loved me. I think if the 
angel of death had said to her, " I am coming for one of your children 
— which shall it be ? " she would have paused to consider before 
answering. 

In 1815, some years before the death of Mr. Carr, the three — he, 
his step-daughter, and his adopted daughter — came to London to 
live. Mr. Carr died not long after my introduction to them in 
1823, and in 1824 we were married. Easy to foretell was it that 
the happiness of my life was then secured ; for beautiful, accom- 
plished, good, was the wife that, on the 20th of September, 1824, 
God gave me, to be that life's chiefest blessing and most precious 
boon.f Perhaps — 

" We married too young, and it may be too poor," 

but of the thousands who knew my wife there is no one of them will 
doubt that the fifty-six years that followed were — in so far as she was 
concerned — " blessed in every deed." 

* "She was a light-hearted, merry little maid as ever lived, and had learned the 
happy art of manufacturing her own pleasures, and doing much in her unfinished 
way to contribute to the pleasures of the few around her. In summer she walked, 
and ran, and bathed, and gathered shells and samphire and sang with the birds, and 
galloped old Sorrel ; and on Sundays always went, in the old carriage, driven by 
the old coachman, drawn by the old horses, and escorted by the old footman, 
to the veiy old church." — " Grandmamma's Pockets," Mrs. S. C Hall, published by 
W. & R. Chambers. 

f On the 23d of September, 1824, I received from a publisher, James Duncan, 
in Paternoster Row, a sum of ^40 for a book, one of the series of " The Modern 
Traveler: Brazil," the editor of which was Josiah Conder. The volumes were 
merely condensations, skillfully and " readably " put together. The ^40 sufficed 
for the church-fees, and the wedding-trip to Petersham, near Richmond. I was 
then a reporter with a fair salary, and so we began life together. 

It is worth recording that the anniversary of our fiftieth wedding-day was on 
a Sunday. We went to our parish church at Kensington. It chanced to be 
Sacrament Sunday. We knelt at the altar. Our good and much-loved friend, 
Archdeacon Sinclair, was astonished and displeased to hear me whispering, and 
looked so as he shook his head ; but when a word or two conveyed to him the 
purport of my words, he smiled and held up his hands in token of a blessing, for 
the words that caught his ear were these, "With this ring I thee wed," as I 
slipped another ring on the third finger of her left hand. The two rings she wore 
during the after-years of her life, and they were buried with her in her grave at 
Addlestone. 



ORIGIN OF HER IRISH SKETCHES. 551. 

In 1825 Mrs. Hall had written nothing. There had been no 
token of her power given to her or to me ; the rich vein of ore was, 
as yet, undiscovered. Her first essay was brought about thus : One 
evening she was telling me some anecdotes of her old Irish school- 
master, " Master Ben." Said I, " I wish you would write about that 
just as you tell it." She did so. I printed her story in The Spirit 
and Manners of the Age, a monthly periodical I then edited, and from 
that day dates her career as an author. Other tales of the friends 
and acquaintances of her childhood and girlhood followed. Eventu- 
ally they were collected into a volume, entitled " Sketches of Irish 
Character," and she became " an author by profession." * 

It is a voluminous subject — that of her sketches and stories of 
Irish character : my limited space forbids any attempt to do justice 
to it here. Generally they were taken from life, for the most part 
being memories of childhood and early girlhood. A very small 
incident often sufficed to form a long story. Her mode of working 
may perhaps be best illustrated by the following words of her own : 

" I remember having- a conversation on this topic with my friend Maria 
Edgeworth. She did not see, so clearly as I saw, the value of the imaginative 
in literature for the young, and was almost angry when she discovered that a 
sketch I had written of a supposititious scene at Killarney was pure invention. 
She told me, indeed, that she had been so deceived by my picture as actually 
to have inquired for, and tried to find out, the hero of it ; and argued strongly 
for truth in fiction. I ventured, notwithstanding my homage for that most 
estimable woman, to ask her if her portrait of Sir Condy, in ' Castle Rack- 
rent,' was a veritable likeness, and endeavored to convince her that to call 
imagination to the aid of reason — to mingle the ideal with the real — was not 
only permissible but laudable as a means of impressing truth. 

" I think so still. I believe the author who does what I suggest may be, 
and ought to be, done, is no more guilty of wrong than was He who ' Spake 
in Parables.' " 

Of the reciprocity that, in Ireland, means all on one side, she 
knew nothing. Reading some of her books lately, I am astonished 
at her " liberality " (according to the loftier reading of the term) 

* Her sketches and tales of that order are numerous ; yet, even when their 
number is kept in view, the reader may find it difficult to credit the accuracy of the 
following anecdote : Somewhere about i860 we were traveling from Liverpool to 
London. I had bought for amusement on the way some of the serial publications 
of that time. I saw her reading one of them with great attention. She put it into 
my hand, saying, "Read that ; it's a capital Irish story." I looked at it and said, 
" Well, that's modest, at any rate ; for it's your own." She had read it through, 
and had evidently pondered over it without the slightest idea that she had written 
it. The story may be comprehended when I add that whatever she wrote she 
rarely read after it was written, leaving it entirely for me to prepare it for the 
printer and revise proofs, never thinking to question my judgment as to any erasure 
or addition I might make. Several of her Irish sketches — one I particularly re- 
member being, " We'll see about It " — she wrote between the morning and evening 
of a summer day. I remember seeing her reading " The Whiteboy," pondering and 
wondering how " the author would manage to dispose of the hero of the tale." 



552 HER ESTIMATE OF THE PEASANTRY. 

toward Roman Catholics. I could quote a hundred passages in 
point : but as many to prove how with all her heart, mind, and soul, 
she preferred the Reformed Faith as better, happier, and far more 
in accordance with the teachings and example of the Master Christ. 
I will quote only one extract from " The Whiteboy," a novel pub- 
lished in 1835 : 

" There are few things in the world so touchingly beautiful as the respect 
and affection that subsist between the Roman Catholic priest and his flock ; 
those who study the people can not wonder at their strength and endurance. 
From the cradle to the grave, the priest is the peasant's adviser and his 
friend ; who knows all his concerns — not only the great business of his life, 
but its minutia ; his private cares and sorrows, his faults, and his crimes, are 
all in the priest's keeping. His judge, his advocate, his punisher, he is also 
his protector — very, very rarely his tyrant. The sympathy and kindness of 
the priest win and keep his heart." 

I am very sure that no one can read her stories without feeling 
sympathy — I will add, affection — for the Irish people ; their faults 
are recorded, or exhibited, with so much considerate and generous 
allowance ; their virtues are detailed with such evident delight ! 

Her books were never popular in Ireland, though very popular 
in every other country. She tried — as she did by her bonnet-rib- 
bons — to blend the orange and the green. She saw in each party 
much to praise and much to blame ; but what one party approved 
the other condemned, and " between two stools " — the adage is 
trite. Yet her stories are fertile of sympathy, generous, considerate, 
loving, and kind ; pregnant with true wisdom, and indulgent as to 
faults on both sides — perhaps to excess. To pursue this topic 
would require greater space than I can give to it. It must suffice to 
say she loved her country and its people very dearly. 

Her freedom in writing of her old friends of the humbler classes 
gave them dire offense ; they " never thought Miss Maria would 
have done it ! " I remember one incident in point. We had an 
Irish cook, who, far from possessing the loquacious qualities of her 
countrywomen in general, was extremely taciturn, giving her mis- 
tress the shortest possible answers to all questions. A " yes " or 
" no " seemed the most that could be extracted from her. Finally, 
she gave warning. When asked her reasons, she admitted she had 
no fault to find with the place ; but, on being still pressed to declare 
why she left it, she turned suddenly round and quitted the room, 
exclaiming, as she reached the door, " Arrah, ma'am, lave me alone ! 
Ye know ye 1 re going to put me into a book! " 

I can not here write at any length of the numerous books Mrs. 
Hall produced from time to time ; they number, perhaps, two hun- 
dred and fifty volumes, including edited volumes, and small tracts 
that often may have done more vital service to humanity than her 
illustrated quartos. Of that long, varied, and admirable list there 



CONVALESCENCE OF THE PRINCE. 



153 



was, I think, none on which she looked back with greater joy than 
a little book entitled " Thanksgiving," an attempt to record the 
expression of a nation's gratitude (on the 27th of February, 1872) 
for the recovery of the Prince of Wales, when the prayers of a whole 
people ascended to — and, as she believed, were heard at — the Throne 
of Grace. That was a prize essay, for which ^100 was awarded to 
her by the Beaumont Institution. I quote the concluding passage 
of the little book, concerning the universal joy for the convalescence 
of the Prince : 

" It is impossible to overestimate the blessing it will take to every land 
on which the sun rises and sets. It will powerfully strengthen any govern- 
ment that may direct the destinies of this kingdom, its colonies, and depend- 
encies ; it will convey a sense of security to hundreds of thousands of Brit- 
ish homes ; it will remove all pretense that the sympathies of the country are 
with the band of treason-agitators who are speaking and doing evil against 
all that are in authority. It will be an example — at once an encouragement 
and a warning — to the well-affected and the disaffected, of every other king- 
dom and state ; it will carry conviction everywhere that the Queen and her 
family are very dear to the hearts of the people ; it will greatly advance and 
spread the principle of Christian loyalty under which Great Britain has pros- 
pered, and will, by God's help and blessing, continue to prosper. 
" The nations not so blessed as thee, 

May in their turn to tyrants fall, 
But thou shalt flourish great and free, 

The dread and envy of them all ! " 

In all our joint books her pen was ever ready to labor side by 
side with mine. Usually she gave me for every chapter or monthly 
part a sketch or short tale intended to vary and lighten descriptions 
of travel, details, or traditionary facts. The tale or sketch was 
humorous or pathetic as her fancy and the theme might suggest ; 
but, whatever the locality we had in hand, it was sure to furnish her 
with a subject. The slightest groundwork was enough ; any inci- 
dent, however simple, supplied her genius with materials to work 
upon. I have shown as much in the anecdote of Maria Edgeworth 
recorded just above. 

When I was editing the New Monthly and other works, she re- 
viewed many books for me ; but it was her stipulation that I was to 
hand to her none that were either to be abused or condemned. 
Such tasks were to be assigned to others. Many a time she has 
said to me : " That is a book I can not like ; you must get somebody 
else to review it." I doubt whether she ever wrote a review that 
was disagreeable to the author of the work reviewed. Yet I have 
no doubt I might affix her signature to at least a thousand reviews 
of published books. 

Her work for the sacred cause of Temperance lives after her, 
and will continue to have mighty influence as long as that cause 



554 THE TEMPERANCE CAUSE. 

needs to be advocated, and the curse of intemperance remains to 
afflict and disgrace humanity. 

I have made reference to Mrs. Hall's first published work. Her 
last, written after an interval (that was by no means one of rest) of 
nearly fifty years, was "Boons and Blessings," published in 1875, 
and dedicated to the good Earl of Shaftesbury. The book is a col- 
lection of temperance tales, most of which had, in the form of tracts, 
done previous duty in many ways. They are here brought together 
in a volume, illustrated by several of the best artists — Mr. and Mrs. 
E. M. Ward, P. R. Morris, A. R. A., Frederick Goodall, R. A., 
George Cruikshank, Alfred Elmore, R. A., G. H. Boughton, A. R. A, 
N. Chevalier, etc. Some of the stories, however, were original. 
The engravings were costly ; the book was published at a low price, 
and the result was, of course, a loss to the author. So, also, it was 
with two books written by me, and issued about the same time — 
"The Trial of Sir Jasper" and "An Old Story" — temperance tales 
in verse. We did not look for gain ; far from it ; but we did not 
anticipate the somewhat serious loss in which these publications in- 
volved us. Subsequently I disposed of the stock and copyrights to 
the Temperance League, and thus my main purpose was achieved. 
The sales had been extensive ; but under no circumstances could 
the expenditure have been defrayed by the receipts.* The " pres- 
entation copies " numbered nearly a thousand. " Sir Jasper " was 
translated into French, Dutch, and Welsh, and cliches were supplied 
by me, without charge, to all periodicals from which applications 
came for them. At least, if our pecuniary loss was somewhat 
serious, we had the reward we most prized — in the belief that by 
our labor in writing, and our sacrifices in publishing, these works, we 
had advanced and strengthened the sacred cause of Temperance. 

I may fitly append to the above a brief reference to that portion 
of Mrs. Hall's and my own literary labors in which temperance prin- 
ciples were more distinctly advocated, the following copy of a me- 
morial drawn up by her at the request of the Rev. Canon Ellison, 
one of the most indefatigable and most estimable of the many cler- 
gymen of the Church of England who are engaged in combating the 
evils of the liquor traffic : 

* In fact, the books were " too good for the money" ; for in issuing them it 
had not been my object to make the publications remunerative. My main purpose 
was to introduce into temperance literature a higher class of pictorial Art than was 
usually found there, and that object I achieved, with the assistance of the distin- 
guished artists I have referred to. To the poems I added notes, embodying co- 
pious evidence of the terrible evils of intemperance, showing what a social plague- 
spot is the public-house, and how rapid and easy is the descent from "moderate 
drinking " to habitual drunkenness ; and furnishing, in the shape of the emphatic 
declarations of judges, magistrates, coroners, doctors, clergymen, and so forth, a 
body of testimony conclusive and convincing. I have reason to believe the books 
continue to be effective in disseminating the principles of temperance, and I hum- 
bly thank God for that belief. 



THE TEMPERANCE CAUSE. 



555 



" Memorial from the Women of England to Her Gracious Majesty Queen 
Victoria (issued by the Ladies' Committee of the Church of England Tem- 
perance Society). 

" The women subjects of your Majesty presume to address your Majesty 
concerning a matter of vital interest and importance to them, as mothers, 
daughters, sisters, or wives. 

" They learn, with deep sorrow and alarm, that it is proposed, by meas- 
ures now before Parliament, to lessen the restrictions which, by law, are 
placed on the sale of intoxicating drinks. 

" They believe that to do this, especially as regards the hours of closing 
public-houses, could only be to bring heavy discouragement on the labors of 
the many societies, of the many clergymen and ministers of all denominations, 
and the other earnest workers, who have been for years endeavoring to arrest 
the progress of the ' national vice,' and thus to augment an evil that is threat- 
ening more and more to undermine the prosperity of the country. They see, 
in this widely spreading intemperance, that which is adding greatly to their 
own sorrows and troubles, destroying the capacity for work on the morrow, 
trenching upon their home requirements, diminishing their home comforts, 
promoting discord, making them the victims of numberless outrages, visiting 
their children with the curse of hereditary disease and of neglected education, 
crowding with husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers, the jails, poorhouses, 
and lunatic asylums maintained at the public cost, throughout your Majesty's 
dominions. 

" It is as a woman's question, therefore, they respectfully claim to view it : 
and they humbly approach your Majesty with the confiding hope that the 
same gracious influence which has always ranged itself on the side of suffer- 
ing of every description, may be exerted to shield them in the present instance, 
and further, by all legitimate and constitutional means, to promote the growth 
of those temperate habits on which their own happiness, no less than the 
well-being of your Majesty's dominions, so largely depends." 

We always considered — and, as far as we could, proclaimed — that 
to plant the seeds of Temperance in the hearts and minds of the Lit- 
tle Ones, was the first, the highest, the holiest duty, of its advocates 
and upholders. It often gave us great delight when a Band of Hope 
(honored and glorified be the title) headed by their pastors and 
teachers, marched by our house at Kensington, stopped for a few 
minutes at the door, and gave a cheer of grateful recognition. We 
used to contrast their outer condition with that of the poor pariahs 
of our streets ; clean in person and neatly clad ; healthy in aspect ; 
orderly as if they had been regimentally trained ; amenable to dis- 
cipline ; armed cap-a-pie for the battle of life, with the armor of 
righteousness newly put on, to be never laid aside ; they gave hos- 
tages to the future — to be thereafter good in all the relations of life : 
as fathers, mothers, wives, sons, daughters, subjects, citizens ; in fact, 
to do the work of God for the benefit, temporal and eternal, of all 
humanity. 

Much of Mrs. Hall's writing was addressed to these bands. They 
are at the commencement of a journey, long or short, for which due 
preparation is being made. No self-denial is required here ; no 
abandonment of a perilous habit that demands sacrifice — always 



556 REFORMED DRUNKARDS. 

difficult to make. They begin at the beginning, with almost assured 
security of endurance to the end: "happy and glorious," and by 
consequence " victorious " — victorious over sin and death. Their 
bodies made healthful, their minds invigorated and strengthened to 
learn any good lesson ; their souls enlightened for the Hereafter in 
this world and the next. The little soldiers, from infancy to girl- 
hood and boyhood, thus paraded, frequently cheered our hearts and 
set us thinking what we could do, and how we could do, that which 
might give them vigor for their work. 

I think I never saw my beloved wife made so happy as she was 
often made by such a procession as that I have thus weakly endeav- 
ored to describe. I well remember her arresting such a group, kiss- 
ing several of the tiny ones, and breathing a blessing with the im- 
printed kiss. 

I will give with these brief and comparatively inefficient remarks 
an anecdote. It is one of the earliest on the subject we heard, and 
there is no saying how much it influenced Mrs. Hall in urging her 
ever-active pen to advocacy of Temperance in all its bearings and 
relations, but more especially as regarded the young. 

A drunkard went to the public-house for his glass. While drink- 
ing at the bar he heard the flashy landlady angrily exclaim, " There 
are those nasty children again — turn them out ! " He chanced to 
peer through the window, and saw they were his children at play 
with the children of the publican. They certainly were ragged and 
dirty — quite unfit to be the companions of the boys and girls, well 
fed and well dressed, of the public-house where he spent money that 
they might be so. 

Seized with a sudden terror of remorseful shame, he put down 
the half-emptied glass on the counter and passed out. From that 
hour he resolved that ere long his children should be as clean, as 
duly fed, and better dressed than, the children of the publican's 
wife, and that they should become playmates of little ones in a 
higher social grade than theirs. And, God aiding him, he kept his 
word. It was his last visit to the gin-palace : the first and only good 
lesson he had learned there. And long afterward, when he told this 
story to Mrs. Hall, it was with thanksgiving prayer — for his children 
then occupied positions much higher than those the children of the 
publican filled — when the incident happened that changed the whole 
current of his life. 

Yet another story I am tempted to tell. Some five or six years 
ago, while at Bath, we were called upon by Mr. Gray the temperance 
missionary in that city. He told us that, a short time previously, 
he had visited a widow who lived with her children in her own 
house. All about indicated respectability, order, and comfort. She 
informed him that her husband had been a drunkard, and that her 
home was then the usual drunkard's home — miserable, filthy, de- 
graded ; she and her little ones in rags, often hungry. One memo- 



WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 



557 



rable day a stranger left at the door a tract-story. The man read it ; 
from that time he deserted the public-house, never took a drop, and 
as a result restored his family to happiness, saw them well clad and 
comfortable, and after a time succeeded in saving money enough to 
purchase the house in which the widow and her children were then 
living. She told Mr. Gray she still had the tract, and would keep it 
as long as she lived. Mr. Gray asked to see it : there were brought 
to him some leaves of a soiled and evidently well-read pamphlet. It 
was "The Drunkard's Bible," by Mrs. Hall. Some of my readers 
may know it. It was originally published, about forty years ago, in 
the Edinburgh Journal of Messrs. Chambers, reprinted with their 
consent by (I believe) the temperance publishers at Norwich, and 
subsequently several times by other workers for the cause. It was 
republished in " Boons and Blessings." 

I think there must have been more than half a million of that 
tract circulated. 

I leave my readers to guess the feelings of Mrs. Hall when this 
anecdote was communicated to her by Mr. Gray. They may be 
sure there was sent to the widow a book that was then " in good 
condition," but which I fervently hope is now also soiled sufficiently 
to indicate that it has been put to frequent use. 

In taking leave of this portion of Mrs. Hall's long literary career, 
I may repeat my conviction that, as a writer on temperance, she was, 
and is, a power. Her appeals came from the heart : their persuasive 
and womanly eloquence was powerfully aided by the magic of the 
tales she had to tell of the evils of drink, and knew how to tell with 
such unpretending simplicity, and yet with such admirable mingling 
of humor and pathos. 

There was another subject in which she was almost as deeply in- 
terested as in that of Temperance ; but in this instance the cause 
was not one she labored to extend. On the contrary, she viewed the 
spread of the movement with aversion and apprehension, and ear- 
nestly desired to see its progress checked. I allude to the agitation 
for so-called "Woman's Rights."* 

As regards the evils to which it was her earnest conviction that 
the sweeping changes clamored for by a few of her sex would lead — 

* " I have given ' Memories ' of seven remarkable women. Each was a bene- 
factor by her writings ; these writings were specially designed and calculated to up- 
hold the position of women in the several relations of mother, wife, daughter, friend, 
teacher, and companion ; but neither Hannah More, nor Maria Edgeworth, nor 
Barbara Hofland, nor Jane nor Anna Maria Porter, nor Grace Aguilar, nor, later, 
Catherine Sinclair, foresaw a period when a wrangle for what is wrongly called 
1 Women's Rights ' would not only be forced on public attention, but be pressed, 
with unseemly compulsion, on the Legislature. These truly great and essentially 
good women would have ' entered their protest ' if they had lived to see the peril 
in which certain foolish brawlers are striving to place their sex." — The Book of 
Memories : S. C. Hall. 



558 WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 

though it must occupy much space — I think I can not better express 
her views than by reprinting here her own words : 

" It is matter for deep regret, for intense sorrow indeed — ' be it spoken, to 
their shame ' — that women have recently inaugurated a ' movement ' for the 
creation of what they call ' Woman's Rights,' and that among its zealous but 
unthinking advocates are a few — very few — Women of Letters. I do not 
find many, if any, whose views are entitled to much attention, or whose claims 
to be heard are indisputable ; but those who push and clamor will force 
aside the judicious and just : the foolish are proverbially bolder than the wise. 
Some will ' rush in ' where others ' fear to tread ' ; and it may seem that those 
who are silent give consent, 

" I believe the ' movement ' to be pregnant with incalculable danger to 
men, but especially to women ; and that, if the ' claims ' be conceded and 
women be displaced from their proper sphere, society, high and low, will re- 
ceive a shock such as must not only convulse, but shatter the fabric — which 
no after-conviction and repentance can restore to its natural form. 

" I address this warning to my sex, from the vantage-ground of ' Old Ex- 
perience,' that — 

' doth attain 
To something of prophetic strain,' 

and I earnestly entreat women to beware of lures that in the name of ' Elec- 
toral Rights ' — the beginning of the end — would deprive them of their power 
and lower their position under a pretense of raising it. 

" I warn women of all countries, all ages, all conditions, all classes ! 

" And I humbly urge upon the Legislature to resist demands that are 
opposed to Wisdom, Mercy, and Religion. 

" When women cease to be women, as regards all that makes them most 
attractive — and that must inevitably be the result of concessions which are 
asked for as ' rights,' which are, indeed, daringly demanded on the principle 
that the constitution shall recognize no distinction between women and men ; 
that whatever men are required to do, women shall be, at the least, entitled 
to do — it is surely a mental blindness that can not foresee the misery that 
must follow the altered relations and changed conditions of both. 

" I do not consider it a degradation ; but whether it be so or not, I am 
quite sure the leading, guiding, and controlling impulse of women is to render 
themselves agreeable and helpful to men — whether by beauty, gentleness, 
forethought, energy, intelligence, domestic cares, home-virtues, toil-assistance, 
in 'hours of ease,' in sickness, or amid the perplexities, anxieties, disappoint- 
ments, and labors that environ life. It is so, and it ever will be so, in spite 
of the ' strong-minded ' who consider and describe as humiliation that which 
is woman's glory, and should be her boast. 

" That custom and law press heavily and unjustly on women can not be 
doubted. They will be benefactors who succeed in guarding her against op- 
pression, in obtaining for her protection, and in securing to her those 'rights' 
which are based on policy and justice ; * but the rights that are calculated to 

* It is easy to fancy women doing men's work — with a smile and a sob. We 
have some sad examples of so revolting an evil ; a few such cases in England, many 
more in continental countries. I have seen, in Bavaria, a woman harnessed with 
a cow to the plow, the men and horses being away drilling fbr war ; and in the 
" black country " there are women bending all day long under shameful burdens 



WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 



559 



make women happier and better are very different from those that are de- 
signed to give to them equality with men — as regards pursuits, avocations, 
and duties, from which the minds of all right-thinking women will turn with 
instinctive dread. 

" I believe the originators, and a large majority of the sustainers, of this 
monstrous project are not members of any Christian church. I hope it is so ; 
for those who accept the New Testament as their guide can have no fellow- 
ship with those who put aside the first principles of its inspired teaching, and 
utterly ignore the precepts and example of our Lord and his Apostles. It is 
Christianity that places woman in her true position ; and those who would 
remove her from it, repudiate the faith by which she is elevated, purified, and 
upheld. A woman without an Altar is even more degraded than a woman 
without a hearth. 

" Those who might be expected to make their way to high places in pro- 
fessions, or as merchants or bankers, or even manufacturers or traders, must, 
admittedly, be the best of the sex. With men it is so; the intellectually weak 
seldom succeed in gaining the winning-post. But is it not the best who are 
most needed to rock the cradle, and, in the higher sense of the phrase, to 
sweep the hearth, ministering to the needs and comforts of man, and so pro- 
moting his interest and happiness as well as her own ? Are the feeblest and 
the worst to be put aside for the duties of wifehood and maternity ? or are all 
' emancipated women ' to ignore the sacred influences of Home ? 

" Woman has immense power ; of a surety, it will be lessened, and not in- 
creased, by public manifestation of it — by a proclamation that ' she rules ' — 
by an independence that destroys all trust — by a spirit of rivalry and a strug- 
gle for pre-eminence which, in fact, imply moral and social death ! 

" Yes ; woman has immense power. It is the mother who makes the 
man. Long before he can lisp her name, her task of education is commenced ; 
and, to be effective, it must be continuous. Alas for those who can teach 
but occasionally — by fits and starts — at wide intervals, between which there 
must be blanks, or worse ! There are many to whom that destiny is inevi- 
table ; but what woman so utterly sins against nature as to wish for it and 
seek for it ? 

" It is no exaggeration to say that ' those who rock the cradle rule the 
world.' The future rests mainly with the mother ; foolish are all, and wicked 
are some, who strive for the enactment of laws that would deprive her of her 
first, her greatest, her holiest ' rights,' to try a wild experiment by which, 
under the senseless cry of ' equality,' women would be displaced from the po- 
sition in which God has placed them since the beginning of the world, for all 
Time — and for Eternity. 

" In these our times, unfortunately, women have in many instances been 
so busied about their rights as to ignore or forget their duties ; striving to 
set aside the laws of God and Nature ; untuning the sweet and gentle voice, 
given for the expression of prayer, of supplication, or mercy, charity, patience, 
hope, and faith — in screaming for more liberty. Proving their unfitness by 
the very temper of their demand for an impossible equality, they lose sight of 
the beautiful balance that constitutes society. Even in savage life it is the 
man who seeks the hunting-ground while the woman remains in the wigwam 

from the coal-pit to the barge. Agitation to limit women's work to work for which 
they are designed by nature — work, physical and intellectual — would be, indeed, a 
duty and a glory. But that is not what the " strong-minded " want. 



560 WOMAN'S EIGHTS. 

to nurse the infant and prepare the food, which the man seeks for and ob- 
tains. In every condition of humanity it is the universal law. That is indeed 
the great lesson taught by the teacher we call Nature. It is solely by the 
softening influence of the Christian faith that women are elevated to the po- 
sition they hold in Christian lands ; and the only course beneficial to them is 
that of strengthening and augmenting the qualities that will enable them still 
more to cheer and enlighten the social system, which it is their peculiar prov- 
ince to guide and adorn. A well-organized and properly harmonized woman 
has so much occupation in the sphere so clearly defined in the Book of Life, 
that she appreciates the high privileges of womanhood, in the several relations 
of daughter, friend, wife, and a 'joyful mother of children,' too highly to ex- 
change them for ' advantages,' unseemly, out of keeping, and out of character. 
She values the power of forming the minds of those who are to be the great 
acting principles, the mental mechanists, the heroes, statesmen, rulers of the 
land, hereafter. Her proper sphere is so extensive, that she only fears her 
life may be too short, her power too limited, to fulfill its duties. What a spirit 
of harmony pervades her dwelling ! Be her means large or small, she has 
still something to bestow. Her humanity extends to all around her; she 
never keeps the seamstress waiting for her work or her pay, and is too just to 
beat down the value of a necessary to obtain a luxury. A knowledge of her 
own defects instructs her to be merciful to those of others ; and though her 
servants at first are not better than those of her neighbors, her patience and 
good management render them so at last. She has so early taught the infant 
at her bosom the duty of obedience, that his pliant will bends without distor- 
tion ; and instead of rebellious brawls racking his father's heart, the well- 
trained child already imparts the consciousness of future happiness to the 
parents. Woman, in the quiet noiseless circle of her domestic duties, has 
even more to do with the future characters of empires than man, whose bolder 
brain and stronger muscle must fight life's battle till life is done. For after 
all it is not an exaggeration to say — 

"'Those who rock the cradle rule the world.' 

"If woman but 'knows herself,' she can work miracles; be she high or 
low, rich or poor, her influence is unbounded — if it be properly exercised. It 
is possible to combine a perfect fulfillment of arduous literary or other labor 
with the devout and fitting attention to the more pleasing duties of a home- 
cherishing life. Those women are certainly the happiest whose occupations 
and pleasures are strictly of a domestic nature ; but no woman pursues a safe 
course who calculates her happiness to consist in any but the path of duty, 
while she remembers that the road to real renown lies, not through mental 
endowments, however brilliant, or intellectual achievements, however great."* 

* I venture to add in a note copied from " Rhymes in Council," some lines that 
may strengthen Mrs. Hall's views of woman's duties : 

" Contrast ! Friend, counselor, companion, wife, 
Cherished for love, in this, and after life ; 
Reflective, prudent, wise, and sweetly kind ; 
A generous heart, a liberal hand and mind. 
Giving a ready help to each who needs ; 
Though to her ' household ' first, as wise and just ; 
Yielding with grace, and not because she must ; 
While she of greater troubles takes her share, 
She treats the lesser as the garden weeds, 



THE WIFE'S DUTY. 561 

Mrs. Hall wrote also some other words that I think may be fitly 
appended to her view of Woman's Rights. They take the form of a 
letter to a young wife ; and express " a woman's view of woman's 
duty." 

" ' I have no words,' she says, ' to express the bitterness of my contempt 
for any woman who gives voice to her husband's faults. It is her duty to 
woo him from them within the sacred sanctuary of home — to entreat, to rea- 
son, to struggle against them heart and soul ; but never to betray. Never — 
never put faith in a woman who, having knelt at God's altar, would go free 
of her bond, or abate her duty to the head and heart of her existence. I tell 
you, Mary — Mary dearest, believe me — this new seeking of womanly inde- 
pendence among married women is an outrage against God and nature ; it is 
one of the works of Antichrist ; it is what no Christian woman can dare to 
countenance. She can never remove the seal from the bond. Let her beware 
of signing it. If she find she can not bend, let her not enter into the cove- 
nant ; but having entered, no human law can unbind — no word of man can 
unloose — what God has joined. Man was created to protect and cherish — 
woman lovingly to serve ; there is no reasoning, no arguing, ' If yon cherish, 
/ will serve.' If the man forget his duty, let the woman be protected ; but 
under all circumstances keep the bond inviolate. The one great poet, in a 
world of prose, has happily expressed the nature of this holy union : 

' As unto the bow the cord is, 
So unto the man is woman. 
Though she bends him, she obeys him. 
Though she leads him, still she follows — 
Useless one without the other.' 

Marriage, in my eyes, is no more a civil contract than baptism or the most 
holy Sacrament of our Lord ; it is in every sense of the word sacred, only to 
be dissolved by death — if by that ! " 

In passing from the subject, I venture to append some other 
lines of my own extracted from " Rhymes in Council ": 

" Away with women of new-fangled schools — 
God pardon them — who would unsex the sex : 
Of all their natural rights make ghastly wrecks ; 
And let none rule who does not show she rules ! 
Shadow for substance giving — where they bring 
A taint more deadly than an adder's sting." 

There is another subject in which she took deep interest. In 
1878 one of God's good women established, at 4 and 6 Kerbey 
Street, Poplar, a house of safety and shelter for the " friendless and 
fallen " — to be either would be bad enough : " in London there are 
tens of thousands who are both ! " 

To be removed, and yet with gentle care, 
That flowers as well are not uprooted there. 
Thus love endures through all a checkered life, 

In calm in sunshine, or when tempest-tost, 

The husband found, a lover is not lost, 
The sweetheart still remains 1 — a sweetheart-wife ! " 
36 



562 FRIENDLESS AND FALLEN. 

The locality is about the worst of metropolitan outlets — in the 
neighborhood of the " London Docks," where sailors are often trapped 
by women specially unsexed, inconceivably odious ; where the brawls, 
the blows, the curses, are continuous by day as well as by night. 
Yet here these God's good women live and do His work : 

" Among the drunken and the dissolute, 
The rag-clad Circe, and the human brute, 
With fiends that slay by fetid atmospheres — 
They walk, and breathe, and toil : yet have no fears. 
Strong in God-given strength, what should they dread ? 
Guarded, and armed, and guided as they go, 
By Angels, passing with them, to and fro : 
Alone these peril-paths they never tread." 
" There are sacred places in England to which pilgrimages are made, 
places in which battles have been fought for freedom, where grand and holy 
work has been done for God and man. Only ruined walls are some of them, 
yet often the wayfarer is tempted to cast the shoes from off his feet, for 
he is treading on holy ground ! 

" Coarse and common houses are these houses in Kerbey Street, but many 
Magdalens will visit them in grateful homage, and date their salvation from 
the day they saw them first. Shrines they may be to which rescued sinners 
converted into good mothers and good wives, will make pilgrimages here- 
after." 

" The visitor to Kerbey Street will see two shops, No. 4 and No. 6. It 
was, I believe, an original thought — certainly it was a happy one — to devise 
that arrangement. A woman who has ' fallen ' hesitates to knock at a hall- 
door; she must stand in the street before it is opened, and she may be 
watched. But into the shop she glides unnoticed, to buy it may be, or seem 
to buy, a halfpennyworth of pins or a cotton-ball ; thence the passage into the 
parlor is brief and easy. There one of the good ladies meets her, with loving- 
look, a cordial hand-grip, a hopeful smile, a cheering word, a word of welcome, 
and a gently-breathed prayer — and together they enter the inner room. 

" Yes, it was a happy thought ; the thought has borne seed. The friend- 
less and fallen find their way to home, to repentance, to virtue, to happiness ; 
and thank God (as I did) for the wise thought— a very small thing, yet, I 
verily believe, inspired. 

" A front-door, shame-lowered women will not enter ; a back-door infers 
a sense of degradation : but a shop is a place as free as the causeway of the 
street. 

" Let the hint be taken, let the example be acted upon by all such Institu- 
tions in all parts of the world. 

" The door is never closed — all day it is open ; and at any hour of the 
night a ring of the bell is sure to have a response. It is often that at mid- 
night, the summons of a forlorn and outcast sister is answered by one of 
these grand almoners of Christ — a woman, God taught, God inspired, and God 
blessed ! " 

I have quoted these passages from an appeal by Mrs. Hall in 
Social Notes, December, 1878. It was responded to, I know, by 
several persons who, having read it, desired to be helpers of the 
women who did the work ; but there were results even more cheer- 
ing than theirs. One of them reached the eyes and ears of the 



DOMESTIC SERVANTS. 563 

writer. Verily, we do not often plant good seed and enjoy nothing 
of the fruitage. It will be sufficient if I print a letter received from 
Mrs. Wilkes, dated May 27, 1881, addressed to me. 

" The Elms, Coppermill Lane, 

" Walthamstow, Essex, 

May 27, 1 88 1. 
"My dear Sir: 

" At our last general committee, the Hon. Mrs. Stuart Wortley in the chair, 
a vote of sympathy to you for the loss you have sustained was passed, and I 
am requested to write you by the ladies of that committee, of which Mrs. 
Hall was a member. 

" I shall not ever forget the sympathy she felt and expressed in my work 
when I came to her, or the words she wrote in Social Notes. 

" There is another who will never forget her words either — a poor girl of 
nineteen, betrayed by a man who had known her from childhood. He took 
her to Brighton, left her there enceinte without a shilling ; she pawned her 
clothes, came to London, and walked up and down the Tottenham Court 
Road, trying the dreadful life upon the street. Some one took her into a 
coffee-house, and there she picked up the number of Social Notes in which 
Mrs. Hall spoke of us. She walked over to Poplar, and was taken in at 
once. Her baby was born in course of time ; we kept her twelve months, 
and she is now in a good situation, earning her own living and paying for her 
little girl. I often get a grateful, cheery letter from her ; in my mind she is 
always associated with Mrs. Hall. 

" We are full in Kerbey Street : full here. I wish you could see this lovely 
home ; it is quite beautiful. 

" I am, dear Sir, 

" Very faithfully yours, 

"Anna Wilkes." 

Household Servants. — Mrs. Hall left some wise — and useful 
— observations, the birth and growth of experience, on this important 
subject. I think a page or two may be well occupied in printing 
them as one of the Memories of her : 

Servants are, generally, not what they were when I first endeavored to put 
in practice the training I had received in home duties from a mother whose 
varied accomplishments rendered her the admiration of those who knew her ; 
neither are mistresses what they were in those days. 

But much can be done by judicious management to obtain and keep good 
domestics. 

For many years my servants, as a general rule, have only left me to get 
married. When obliged to replace them, I make the closest investigation, 
not only as to their characters, but the characters of those with whom they 
have lived. I explain what is to be done and must be done ; and either in 
health or sickness they find their mistress their friend. As long as they per- 
form their duty I can honestly say I discharge mine ; and if they stumble, 
and I can no longer retain them in my service, I do not forsake them, and 
have more than once had the happiness of knowing that my efforts have been 
rewarded, and the sheep that might have been lost has been saved — and happy 
in another land. 

I wish I could influence my fellow-mistresses to superintend their house- 



564 FORCED BLOOMS. 

holds, and to deal more patiently and kindly, yet firmly, with their servants. 
I wish they could see the happy result that, in my home, is produced by 
mingled firmness and kindness. We leave home with the knowledge that 
when we return we shall find everything in as perfect order as when we left 
it — for all our household gods are as much cared for by our servants as by 
ourselves. 

I am quite ready to admit that there are many " black sheep" among ser- 
vants, but I fear it is so in all orders and classes. Servants have much for 
which to be grateful : few anxieties, few expenses, few wants that are not sup- 
plied to them without efforts of their own — reasonable time for rest, and not 
often a doctor's bill to be settled out of their wages. No doubt there will be 
" draws " upon their purses, needy relatives requiring help. But these are 
seldom numerous. 

It will be the fault of the mistress if they squander too much on dress ; 
and her fault if there is not a nest-egg in the savings-bank. 

After all, perhaps the simple secret is this : Let your servants be treated 
as part of your family ; see to their comforts as they see to yours ; lessen their 
wants, and be sure yoztr wants will be less and less. There is a "familiarity 
that breeds contempt." But if we can be " familiar, yet by no means vulgar," 
we can be so without sacrificing an iota of dignity. The servant who pre- 
sumes upon it is one to get rid of as certainly as she would be if you knew 
her to be a thief. 

As in all cases that concern humanity, the door through which happiness 
enters a household should have above it the words, " Bear and forbear." He 
or she who would strive to get much and give little is as foolish as was the 
dog of fable, who by grasping at the shadow lost the substance.* 

" Labors of love " is not a sentence of mere sound. They are so numerous 
and so palpable that to detail them is needless. Like all other works, to be 
really, practically, and continuously serviceable, the heart must be in the 
work. 

Those who expect to get good servants must be good masters and mis- 
tresses ; if they are so, I have not so utter a disbelief in human goodness as 
to think they will be often disappointed.t 

Forced Blooms. — To this comprehensive subject Mrs. Hall de- 
voted much thought. One of the most valuable of her stories in 
" Tales of Woman's Trials " has that title. I hope it may be read 
by parents who think children can not learn too much ; who rear 
them as they do flowers in a hot-house — to bring out "forced 
blooms," and die early, or, at all events, fade to premature decay. 

* " His is a miserable soul who tries 

How little he may give for much he gets : 
To gifts the truth more specially applies. 
All obligations are but honest debts — 
Debts which the honest debtor gladly meets : 
Those who would try to shirk them are but cheats." 
f " I think we do not, in England, sufficiently appreciate the repose and sup- 
port we derive from — if I may be permitted to combine two words that, according 
to popular opinion, have very different significations — I think we do not sufficiently 
value our setvant-friends. We feel sensibly the annoyance and injury we some- 
times endure from bad servants, but we are seldom grateful enough for comforts 
we derive from good servants." — "A Woman's Story" (1857), Mrs. S. C. Hall. 



BOOKS FOR CHILDREN. 565 

She had a strong belief that children's books were by no means al- 
ways books for children, and in that view was powerfully sustained 
by her honored friends William and Mary Howitt. William wrote 
to her thus : 

" I am convinced that, with half the work and a proper amount of play 
and relaxation, our youth would ultimately acquire far more knowledge, and 
possess far more of the inventive and creative faculty. I am confident that 
from the free and ample exercise I enjoyed as a boy, I have not only passed 
through life free from all kinds of ailments, have been able to do an immense 
amount of literary work, and now, in my eighty-sixth year, feel all the fresh- 
ness of my faculties and possess an amount of physical energy that amazes 
all who witness it. I think nothing of rambling away into the mountains, up 
steep and rugged roads, for three or four hours together, and without any 
sensible fatigue. Will this generation, driven relentlessly through the fac- 
tories of knowledge, with no eight or ten hours' bill, compelled to anticipate 
the energies of their manhood in their growing and unripe years, be able to 
do the same? In a word, is our superabundance of knowledge, are the 
mountains of facts that we accumulate, wisely purchased by the sacrifice of 
a large amount of those years of confirmed manhood, when our early efforts 
should naturally produce their fruits and yield us their rewards ? 

" Nature demands for all young and growing creatures relaxation, un- 
bending of mind, sport in the fresh air, and, in fact, the means of vigorous 
health, in order to enable them to bear the wear and tear of mental tension. 
But this is totally disregarded in modern education. All is work, work, force, 
force, and no play. 

" A boy we knew in England who was thus drilled into premature knowl- 
edge by a very clever mother of the mathematical school, used to startle us 
by such remarks as seemed to come not from himself, but from some familiar 
that possessed him. Mrs. Howitt gave him a book that was a great favorite 
with those of his own age — about eight — but he found it infinitely too juve- 
nile, and informed her that for his occasional light reading he had just finished 
Boccaccio's ' Decameron,' and was beginning ' Don Quixote ' ! " 

These pregnant words of our venerable friend were comments 
on some articles written by Mrs. Hall and printed in Social Notes. 
I do not think my readers will complain if I reprint some passages 
from them. They can not, I humbly think, be without effect on 
the future of children who are to be men and women : 

"There are plenty of children's books, but few books for children. The 
' cause why ' is easy of explanation. The little ones are to be treated as men 
and women before they have entered their teens. With not many exceptions, 
the volumes prepared expressly for them — in art as well as in literature — 
should be prefaced by a motto-line from the ' Night Thoughts ' — 

" ' Imagination's airy wing repress ! ' 

and, perhaps, there are more boys and girls, under ten, who could take re- 
spectable rank at a competitive examination than there are who could tell us 
' all about ' Puss in Boots and Red Riding Hood. I had a little girl on my 
knee, not long ago, who, desiring to inform me as to the distance of the 
planet Jupiter from the moon, or some such calculation, too abstruse for me, 



5 66 



TEACHINGS FOR CHILDREN. 



looked at me with astonishment when I hummed for her a bit of the old 
rhyme — 

" ' Three little kittens had lost their mittens,' 

and wanted to convince me that ' Jack and the Bean-stalk ' could not be 
true ! Many of the little men and women of tender age would join in the 
reproof administered to one of their ' order,' who was caught leaping over 
chairs and tables in the drawing-room, and, singing to her own tune the old 
nursery rhyme — 

" ' Hey diddle diddle, 
The cat and the fiddle, 
The cow jumped over the moon ; 

The little dog laughed to see the sport, 
And the dish ran away with the spoon ' — 

a reproof, instead of a blessing, on the merry heart that had not forestalled a 
weight of care and a burden of troubled thought. 

" I believe it is Dr. Johnson who says he would rather see a boy throwing 
stones at an apple-tree than doing nothing ; but there is a worse state than 
even that of listless idleness : it is when the mind is crammed with food it 
can not digest. I consider the perpetual inculcation of facts to be not only 
detrimental to a child's present but pernicious to its future ; and that to leave 
imagination entirely barren is a crime against nature. It is against this evil 
— speaking from the vantage-ground of ' old experience,' that 

" * . . . doth attain 
To something of prophetic strain.' 

I enter my protest — against a principle that seems to guide and govern those 
who are to ' rear up ' the men and women of hereafter — against a system — 
for it is a system — which excludes imagination from its curriculum, and so 
depresses sympathy and puts charity out-of-doors, contracting and depressing 
judgment — hardening nature by limiting its exercise to granite facts. 

" My convictions on this head are so strongly supported by a physician 
who has conferred immense benefit on humanity, Dr. B. W. Richardson, that 
my duty may be limited to indorsing his — as resulting from experience dur- 
ing a long life of intercourse with the young, and of large happiness derived 
from such intercourse. These are his ' burning words ' : 

" ' The present modes of education are not compatible with healthy life. 
The first serious and increasing evil, bearing on education and its relation to 
health, lies in the too early subjection of pupils to study. Children are often 
taught lessons from books before they are properly taught to walk, and long 
before they are properly taught to play. Play is held out to them not as a 
natural thing, as something which the parent should feel it a duty to encour- 
age, but as a reward for so much work done and as a rest from work done, 
as though play were not itself a form of work, a form of work which a child 
likes while he dislikes another form because it is unfitted to his powers. For 
children under seven years of age all teaching should be through play.' 

" An authority more immediately suited to my purpose is the Right Hon. 
G. J. Goschen, who, when distributing prizes to pupils at the Liverpool In- 
stitute, spoke on the subject of fostering and strengthening imaginative 
power : 

" ' He wanted the heart to be stirred as well as the intellect, the better to 
neutralize the dwarfing effects of necessarily narrow careers and necessarily 
stunted lives. ... It was not good for a man or woman to be always breath- 



STREET MUSIC. 567 

ing the atmosphere of business ; they should sometimes inhale the bracing 
ozone of the imagination, . . . and he pitied children whose imaginations 
were not stimulated by fairy tales, and carried far away from the world in 
which their lot was cast. ... It was not only for the individual but for the 
national advantage that imagination should be cultivated.' " 

Street Music. — There is another topic — comparatively insig- 
nificant — on which the heart of Mrs. Hall was much " set." She 
witnessed with sorrow the crusade against street musicians — placing 
it in the list of cruelties. A neighbor at Kensington had written to 
the newspapers, complaining of the " organ-boys " as " intolerable 
nuisances," complaining that while he was " thinking," one of them 
was " grinding under his window," and another " working away in 
the mews at the back." The grievance was — that the wandering 
musicians "disturbed his thoughts." I select the following passages 
from some comments on that letter : 

" From his door there will be a threatening order to ' move on.' Not so 
from mine ; although I too am a ' thinker,' and the sounds make me put 
aside my pen — for three minutes, at least. 

" ' Disturb my thoughts ! ' Yes. So would the coo of the cushat dove, so 
would the song of the up-springing lark, so would the hum of the honey- 
laden bee, so would the laughter of merry children ; so would any of the God- 
given sounds that greet me where there is green grass, leaf-clad trees, and 
healthy breezes all around. 

" ' Disturb my thoughts ! ' Yes ; for I am thinking in a suburb of a vast 
city where all sounds are noises — excepting, perhaps, that solitary one. 

" Music has ever been to me the chiefest joy of life — 

" ' What know we of the Saints above, 
But that they sing and that they love ? ' 

" If ' the meanest flower that blows ' could delight the poet, the simplest or 
the rudest melody can give to me intense enjoyment, and make me almost 
fancy the sense of hearing is a happier gift than that of sight. 

" ' In the mews ! ' Did you see that lonely seamstress put aside her work, 
open her window, and listen with intense delight ? Did you mark the glow 
that made homely features beautiful, as she leaned over the sill and with thin 
fingers beat time ? For her it was a rare treat, a source — perhaps her only 
source — of happiness, as full of joy as a chorus would be to you, when a 
thousand mingled voices glorify the sublime creations of Handel or Mozart. 
She can give the poor organ-grinder only her blessing. 

" But she does give him that. 

" Is she too refined to say of the coarse strain — 

" ' O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet south, 
That breathes upon a bank of violets, 
Stealing and giving odor ! ' 

" And in the street, too — even while you write and ' think ' — there is — 
another! Up starts Mary Jane from her den of pots and pans, runs up the 
area-steps, and has a feast of music, such as you will have when you visit the 



568 MRS. HALL'S WORK. 

Albert Hall. She will miss the penny she gives him ; but she has had her 
penny's worth ; and to make her entertainer ' move on ' is to rob her of a 
pleasure that lightens toil and is a huge recompense for labor. 

" Wait a minute longer, and what will you see ? Out creep, or rush, the 
tiny little ones from the alleys near at hand ; they are striving to sing and 
trying to dance. At all events, they jump up and down with unshackled 
glee, pull one another about, rudely it may seem to those who are in training 
of some professor, and ungracefully, no doubt, according to the judgment of 
practiced waltzers, but with thankful joy in all their little hearts. 

" Surely it must be a selfish nature that would deprive so many of so 
much happiness ; and all because for a few minutes of the day he must put 
aside, his pen and cease from ' thinking.' We do not laud the dog of fable 
who denied the ox the hay on which he lay, and which he himself could not 
eat. The lares and penates of a hovel may be the coarse bits of broken pot- 
tery a connoisseur despises ; the coarse meal of unmentionable dishes may be 
to some the luxury the epicure abhors. 

" Even so the music of the hurdy-gurdy, that ' disturbs ' my neighbor and 
rouses him to unseemly wrath, may be — nay, of a surety is — the sole treat of 
music that a major part of his neighbors can, by any possibility, enjoy. 

" I appeal for considerate mercy on behalf of these ' nuisances intolerable ' 
— the organ-grinders that ' disturb ' our streets. Who knows how much 
they may teach by their coarse editions of melodies — unforgotten through 
life ? Who knows how much of good seed, early planted but long unwatered 
— to all seeming, dead — they may revive and strengthen to bear fruit ? 

" I heard a story of a rude and rough sailor who had long warred with 
foes and storms. He was dying in one of our hospitals, heedless of Hereafter. 
Suddenly he started up — a note of street music had entered through an open 
window. The physician was startled by a sudden return of voice and strength : 
' Mother, mother ! ' he exclaimed, raising his right hand and gazing intently 
at the bed-foot ; ' mother, mother ! I have it ; I have it — 

" ' Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, 
Look upon a little child.' 

Calmly, and with a smile that lit up his weather-beaten features, he lay back 
on his pillow and died." 

And surely I may not forget the aid The Art Journal received in 
actual work as well as in sweet and wise counsel to me, its editor. 
Here were published the major part of her " Pilgrimages to English 
Shrines," and here the most beautiful of all her books, " Midsummer 
Eve." Here she gave to my dry details concerning " The Thames " 
and "South Wales," the sparkling episodes from which they derived 
great value. 

There is a sun-dial somewhere with the inscription : 
" Horas non numero, nisi serenes." 
(I record only hours of sunshine.) 

I do not know whence I borrow this passage : 

" Let it be remembered that her wit was never employed to scoff at good- 
ness, nor her reason to dispute against truth. In this age of wild opinions 
she was as free from skepticism as the cloistered virgin : she never wished to 



MRS. HALL'S WORK. 569 

signalize herself by the singularity of paradox. Her practice was such as her 
thoughts naturally produced. She was charitable in her judgment and opin- 
ions, grateful for every kindness she received, and willing to impart assistance 
of every kind to all whom her power enabled her to benefit." 

I have preferred to give as memories of my wife these teachings 
of her love and wisdom, to filling my pages with anecdotes, that 
might more directly exhibit and illustrate her personal character. I 
can not have space for both. I believe her thoughts on some essen- 
tial matters may be accepted as seed that will bear fruit. She did 
not live in vain : and verily " her works do follow her." 

Mrs. Hall has written nine novels, while her sketches and shorter 
stories number hundreds. Her novels are — 1, " The Buccaneer " ; 
2, " The Outlaw" ; 3, " Uncle Horace " ; 4, " Marian " ; 5, " Lights 
and Shadows of Irish Life " ; 6, " The Whiteboy " ; 7, " A Woman's 
Story " ; 8, " Can Wrong be Right " ; 9, " The Fight of Faith." 

I hope before I leave earth to issue these nine volumes as a series 
— revised, annotated, and prefaced by me. I shall add to them much 
that is interesting. 

Most of them have long been out of print. I can seldom find 
one of them in a catalogue of old books for sale, and I have laid the 
flattering unction to my soul that those who possess them are not 
desirous to part with them. Although I have eagerly sought for 
copies, at present I do not possess them all. Most of them may cer- 
tainly be classed among " scarce books." 

In recalling to memory the actors I have known, I made some 
note of three successful dramas written by Mrs. Hall. I have always 
regretted that she did not produce other and more ambitious 
works for the stage, believing that she might have achieved great 
things in that class of literature. I am not singular in that opinion. 
I will add to my own the opinion of Lytton Bulwer (Lord Lytton), 
who in 1832 made this record on that subject (" Asmodeus at Large," 
in the New Monthly). Speaking of " The Buccaneer," he says : 

"An admirable historical romance, full of interest and with many new 
views of character. It is an historical romance, and yet, unborrowed from 
Scott, it is sui generis, which is saying a great deal. The author has intro- 
duced Cromwell in the foreground as the principal character, and done jus- 
tice to the genius of the man." 

" Mrs. Hall has a considerable mastery of style. Her Irish sketches pos- 
sess great beauty of composition, and there is a little tale of hers in ' The 
Amulet,' ' Grace Huntley,' which is written and conceived with extraordinary 
skill — the idea is even grand. I esteem the conception of that story to be 
one of the most dread and tragic in modern composition. Mrs. Hall evinces 
in it, as in ' The Buccaneer,' very marked talents for the stage, and if she would 
devote her time and skill to a village tragedy that should contain the simplicity 
and power of 'Grace Huntley,' I feel confident that it would have a startling 



5^0 DRESS. 

Her Children's books are numerous : three of them were pub- 
lished in the series issued by the Brothers Chambers. The others 
are, I think, all out of print ; they would certainly bear republication. 
I know of no one who understood children better than she did, 
catered for them with greater ardor, or loved them more truly. She 
was never so happy as when a little maid was sitting and listening at 
her knee. 

In one of her letters I find this passage : " I would not give 
much for a man, and less for a woman, who cares nothing for dress. 

" ' Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, 

But not expressed in fancy : rich, not gaudy.' " 

The counsel of Polonius specially applies to the sex : the woman, 
who is heedless in that way will be careless of her household, and, 
figuratively speaking, seldom " sweep the hearth." I think I may 
safely say that no visitor ever saw Mrs. Hall en deshabille. She thus 
refuted the idea that literary women need be slovens.* Perhaps they 
are too often so. I remember seeing Miss Benger, the author of 
several important historical books — famous at the time — at one of 
Campbell's parties in a sort of flannel dressing-gown. 

As are all persons of refined minds, she was very sensitive, and 
could be easily " put out." It was not often, however, she was in 
the way of being so, as regarded either things or people. Courage 
she regarded as wholly a masculine quality, and the peril of giving 
offense she had very rarely to encounter. I have one or two anec- 
dotes to tell as illustrations. In 1845 she commenced, in The Art 
Journal, a story entitled " The Artist " — four chapters of which 
were there printed. Some one sent her, anonymously, a caricature 
of her hero — an old French drawing-master. It effectually paralyzed 
her hand : I could never induce her to finish the tale. 

• An anecdote of a different order I am pleased to relate. One 
day she received an anonymous letter ; it contained merely these 

words — 

"Psalm xci, verses 4, 5, 6, 10, 11." 

* " I hope the reproach of slovenliness is passing away from literature, or rather, 
I should say, from its professors. A well-organized mind can not fail of being 
orderly in all things, and a mind that is not well organized can rarely inform or 
even amuse, except by its absurdities. I never could fancy why a gentleman wrote 
best unshaven and in slippers, or how a lady improved her genius by neglecting 
that neatness of attire which is the outward and visible sign of a well-regulated 
mind and a comfortable home. I would earnestly entreat the young of my own 
sex. who possess, or imagine they are possessed of, literary talent, carefully to avoid 
contracting slovenly or even peculiar habits. Sir Walter Scott (blessings and honor 
to his name forever !) set a glorious example of simplicity and propriety in all things, 
that we ought to follow in gratitude and humility." — Lights and Shadows of Itish 
Life. 



ENCO URA GEM EN T. 5 7 1 

No more ; while the post-mark on the letter told her nothing. On 
turning to the Psalm she read these verses : 

" He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou 
trust ; his truth shall be thy shield and buckler. 

" Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night ; nor for the arrow that 
flieth by day ; 

" Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness ; nor for the destruction 
that wasteth at noonday. 

" There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy 
dwelling. 

" For He shall give His angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy 
ways." 

I think that letter gave her more veritable joy than did any 
secondary letter she ever in her life received. I believe it to have 
influenced her thoughts and pen during the many after-years of her 
career. It must have emanated from some one to whom she had ren- 
dered a service that could be repaid only in that way — by a blessing 
that is so often a large recompense ; the payment of a debt, perhaps — 
recorded by Him who " seeth in secret," and often rewards " openly." 
It gave scope to her imagination ; how, when, where, to whom had 
she done the service there acknowledged ? I believe the speculative 
thought, thus excited, often brought sleep to the head wearied by 
labor and the mind over burdened with toil — acting as an anodyne 
when care and anxiety pressed upon both.* 

She would speculate as to which of her good works brought this 
acknowledgment and reward : came it from a fallen sister rescued 
from sin ? some half-famished, relieved supplicant ? some reformed 
drunkard ? the mother of some child to health restored ? some 
widowed wife whose husband had died on a borrowed pillow ? some 
consumption-stricken patient, who had exchanged a damp straw bed 
in a fetid alley for wholesome air and food at Old Brompton ? some 
"worn-out" governess, some home-nurse, or some broken soldier 
who shouldered his crutch as he issued from a convalescent home ? 
some " incurable " who thanked God for a death-bed unappalled ? 
some seamstress who sang, though not in the actual words of the 
poet, " The Song of the Shirt " ? some overworked laborer at the 
counter whose hours of overtoil had been lessened ? some skeptic 
groping in soul-darkness, to whom her words had brought light ? 

Such speculations as to whence came the prayers breathed, into 
her mind, heart, and soul, by the prayers and prophetic blessings of 
the ninety-first Psalm — are not mine : they were hers. Whoever the 
sender may have been, the object was fully answered. I believe 

* The Irish have a saying, " The prayers of the poor are in heaven before ye ! " 
I have recorded that when Humanity Martin was reported to have been drowned, 
his old housekeeper was observed to receive the news with indifference. On being 
questioned, she said : " The master is not drowned — not he ; if he were drowning, 
there are souls enough about him to keep his head above water." 



572 HER MEMORY. 

nothing in her long life was to her so fertile of happiness. The words 
were as sunshine over a bed of flowers on which the dew had plenti- 
fully fallen. 

They cheered her in her work ; they stimulated, encouraged, and 
— recompensed ; and I am very sure much of the good she did may 
be traced to that simple source. We no more know where we give 
or get a blessing than we know the course that will be taken by Him 
who — 

" Moves in a mysterious way, 
His wonders to perform ! " 

Her memory was marvelous. When I first visited, with her, her 
native Bannow in 1825, there was hardly a stick or stone, and cer- 
tainly not a person, she did not recognize. I remember an old easy- 
chair in the dining-room : she said there used to be a large hole in 
the back. I turned it round, and there, sure enough, was the hole. 
Every step she took was a reminder. What a day it was — that I re- 
call, when we visited the grave of her grandmother in old Bannow 
church ; and the days we rambled together about the scenes and 
among the people she recorded in her " Sketches of Irish Charac- 
ter"! 

I think she could have described the dress of every lady she had 
met at any party twenty years after it occurred. She was ever 
silently observant ; taking mental notes of all that was said and each 
thing that was done, whether at a stately reception or in the cabin of 
the humblest peasant. Nothing, however trivial, escaped her notice. 
Happily her nature — generous, considerate, and sympathizing nature 
— enabled her to transmute the baser metals into gold. She saw 
only what it was wise and good to preserve in memory, never that 
which was ugly, or mean, or evil. What might have been revolting 
she never saw at all. Even disagreeable things seemed without 
power to enter through the eye or the ear into her mind : while her 
spirit never, never wandered from gratitude to God for blessings — 
to be acknowledged by sharing them with all things beautiful and 
good that God has made. So it was through her life up to the very 
day of her death. 

The precepts she practiced and taught are set forth, with a view 
to impress them, in all her many books. There is no one of the 
teachings of God's word that has not received augmented force from 
her pen. The maxim, " Order is Heaven's first law," she strove to 
impress not only in its loftier view, but in the smaller matters that 
influence life : there is no principle of religion, loyalty, duty to God, 
neighborly love, she has not in some way illustrated and sustained. 
None came to her for sympathy, counsel, and aid, who went " empty 
away." Surely the blessing of God was over all she thought, wrote, 
and did. 

I had meant to leave her character in the hands of some loving 



LADY MARTIN. 



573 



friend — to whom, perhaps, it would have been better to have left it 
— but as I draw nearer to the grave, the conviction is more and more 
forced upon me that I should neglect a solemn duty if I left it alto- 
gether to the future. 

Lady Martin — Helen Faucit. — Happily, she is yet with us, 
though the stage she so brilliantly adorned knows her no more. It 
would be apart from my plan to say much concerning her ; but I 
can not write of my wife without mentioning one who was her 
esteemed, respected, and much-loved friend — from the time of Miss 
Faucit's first appearance when a very young girl at the Richmond 
Theatre. In those days Mrs. Hall's pet name for her young friend 
was " Ladybird," and I called her " Lady Helen," little thinking the 
title would one day be veritably hers. We lived to see her as much 
honored in private as in public life : valued for herself — for her high 
qualities of mind and heart : the wife of a most accomplished and 
most estimable gentleman. 

Lady Martin recently published — originally in Blackwood 's Maga- 
zine — a series of papers on the " Female Characters of Shakespeare." 
One of them she thus dedicated to my wife — or rather to her memory, 
for she had left earth when the essay was published : 

" The second of these letters was not completed when tidings of the death, 
after a very brief illness, of the dear friend for whom it was intended, reached 
me. She was present to my mind when I wrote it, and I dedicate it to her 
memory. The world knew her great talents and her worth ; but only her 
friends could estimate her goodness, her charity in thought as well as in deed. 
Her kindness, like her sympathy, knew no limit. It was as constant and loyal 
as it was encouraging and judicious. In loving, grateful memory, she lives, I 
doubt not, in many hearts, as she does in mine." 

I think — could she have read Lady Martin's words — no tribute 
she ever received would have given Mrs. Hall more intense happi- 
ness than this — from a lady she had known from her very dawn of 
womanhood, loving her and respecting her more and more as years 
rolled on and developed her intellectual power, and with it her purity 
and goodness of mind and heart. I am sure there is no woman 
whom, in her early youth, and in matured womanhood, Mrs. Hall 
more truly loved than she did Helen Faucit — Lady Martin ; and I 
feel how gratified by the compliment she would have been if she 
had lived to read it. I gratefully thank that dear and good lady in 
the name of my wife and in my own. 

I received from many friends, and several " strangers," tributes 
to the memory of Mrs. Hall. They form for me a very precious 
volume. I should like to print a number of them : I must be 
content to copy here but one. I find it in a little unpretending 
book, " Songs of Humanity and Progress," written by my esteemed 
and valued friend John T. Markley, of the Sussex Daily News, who 



574 



TRIBUTES TO HER MEMORY. 



had long been the able, earnest, and zealous advocate of the highest 
principles of order, social good, temperance, loyalty, morality, and 
religion : 

" Amid the tumult, tempest-tongued, of State — 

Her own wild, wondrous land in throes of pain, 

She leaves to God earth's sorrows — but to gain 
A home of holy rest : there to await 
And meet her lover at the golden gate. 

Tis not a parting, 'tis a soul's first pace, 

Smile-welcomed by fond spirits into grace. 
That life which glory may but consummate ! 
Could April's laughing sweetness break through snow, 

And yield soft rainbow-hues to frost-stung skies, 
The pictured clouds and air, all winterless, 

Would typify the gifted mind, aglow 
With passion, eloquence, and mysteries — 

A summer, changing not, but quick to bless. 
Although a shift of thrones, she reigneth still 

In hearts unlimited by clime or caste, 

With all her charmed sway : a sway to last, 
As conquerors gain new power from heights and hill. 
The magic of her soul could but fulfill 

Warm mission of a consecrated pen, 

To picture scenic whims, and joys, of men, 
And fancy ran obedient to her will. 
What lofty love ! What beaming tenderness ! 

Sad Ireland's better self redeemed with smiles ; 
New worlds in cottages awoke to sing, 

Chaste music of her muse will ne'er grow less, 
Nor pall upon the crowd which it beguiles, 

'Till remnant voices meet in final Spring." 

Mrs. S. C. Hall died at Devon Lodge, East Molesey, on Sunday, 
the 30th January, 1881. It was on the Sabbath-day — " the day of 
rest" — she was called from earth to Heaven. Her illness was so 
slight, up to that time, as to give no warning of departure " nigh at 
hand." I was leaning over her pillow when she said one word, 
" Darling," breathed into my lips, and was with the Master — to hear 
His greeting, " Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." On her birth- 
day, but twenty-four days before her death-day, she had welcomed a 
large number of friends and neighbors, had sung for them, and was 
in her usual health and spirits. It had long been my custom to write 
to her a letter on her birthday. I did so on that day, sending it into 
her room before she had risen. I print the letter. I need not say 
it was not meant to have been printed. Little thought had I, on the 
6th January, 1881, of seeing it in type. 

All Scripture " written for our learning " confirms the natural — 
so to speak, instinctive — faith that when the body perishes the Soul 
does not die. Such faith is sustained by proofs so numerous, con- 
vincing, and conclusive, as to leave no shadow of doubt on the mind 



THE SOUL IMPERISHABLE. 



575 



of any just and rational inquirer concerning the matter — all-important 
as regards destiny here and hereafter. 

I am but one of a host of witnesses — beyond suspicion of fraud, 
delusion, or want of capacity for judging rightly and righteously — of 
firmly based religious belief — who supply indubitable evidence, from 
repeated experience, during many years of constant and minute in- 
quiry, that the Soul, when removed from earth, can, and does, com- 
municate with Souls that yet continue in the " natural body," which 
the Apostle so markedly distinguishes from the " spiritual body." 

I am grateful for the knowledge thus accorded to me by God. 
While I know that when another good man or woman is gone from 
earth, and another saint is added to the Hierarchy of Heaven, I 
know also that God permits the beatified saint to watch and guard, 
as well as pray for, the beloved who remain on earth yet a while 
longer. 

If I did not so believe, I could not trust in a God just as well as 
merciful : a God who is Love : a God whose Revealed Word is given 
to us for " our learning " — to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest 
— that the Soul, thus enlightened, may embrace and ever hold fast 
the blessed hope of everlasting life. 

I know well that she is in Heaven ; but, with reverence I say it, 
Heaven could not be Heaven to her — a state of bliss — if, retaining 
consciousness and memory, she knew that God would not permit her to 
comfort me when I most need comfort, and guide me where I most 
need guidance. That is not the way in which God rewards his " good 
and faithful servants." 

In a word, I know that those who are called " the dead " do not 
die ; that they are merely removed from the earth-sphere into some 
other sphere — to one of the " many mansions " of which our Lord 
emphatically speaks — the first, but not the only, removal ; and that 
under certain conditions which, at present, we can not comprehend, 
much less control, the Soul that has left earth can, and does, com- 
municate with the Soul that remains on earth. 

I add these lines from a small poem — " Hereafter " : 

" Change there will be : as flowers from branches burst ; 
But I shall see thee — as I see thee now : 
Yet more resembling what thou wert, when first 
I kissed thy smooth cheek and unwrinkled brow : 

" As in the glory of thine early prime : 

Through all thy earth-life : bright at every stage : 

The Soul is never old : and knows not Time ; 
Goodness is beautiful at any age. 

" Together still : if one have earlier birth 

In Paradise : divided : and yet near : 
Though one in Heaven may wait for one on earth : 

A guiding, guarding spirit : there as here ! " 



5 76 LAST BIR THDA Y LETTER. 

How any thinking and rational person, who believes in God and 
the immortality of the Soul,* can for a moment doubt this, I have dif- 
ficulty in imagining. Yet surely I may not forget that I myself had 
such doubt before the beneficent Master, knowing that Scripture 
light had not sufficed for my guidance, sent to me, in His mercy, an 
additional light, that did suffice — a light that enables me to read 
rightly Divine revelation, and to see how best and safest to walk in 
the footsteps of the Lord and Master, Christ. 

It is the teaching by which my wife was taught — and taught — 
during the whole of her long and useful life. It is " peace and good 
will " based on His precepts and example. Call it by what name we 
may, who will question that such Faith is an inexhaustible blessing ? 

Here is the letter to which I have referred : 

"This is the 6th of January, 1881. Surely, surely, I may thank 
God for the blessing He gave to me, and to hundreds of thousands, 
eighty-one years ago ; and bless the memory of your dear mother, 
on whose portrait I look while I write. 

" It was indeed a vast, incalculable blessing God gave me fifty- 
six years ago. Gratitude from me to Him has been increasing year 
by year, and day by day, since the ever-memorable day I saw you 
first. You have been to me a guide, a counselor, a comforter, a 
companion, a friend, a wife, from that day to this ; ever true, faith- 
ful, fond, devoted; my helper in many ways, my encourager and 
stimulator in all that was right : the same consoler in sunshine and 
in storm ; lessening every trouble ; augmenting every pleasure. 

* I quote these passages from " Bishop Pearson on the Creed " : " If I have 
communion with a saint of God, as such, while he liveth here, I must still have 
communion with him when he is departed hence, because the foundation of that 
communion cannot be removed by death." " First, therefore, this must be laid 
down as a certain and necessary truth, that the soul of man when he dieth, dieth 
not, but returneth unto Him that gave it, to be disposed of at His will and pleasure 
— according to the ground of our Saviour's counsel, ' Fear not them that kill the 
body, but can not kill the soul.' That better part of us, therefore, in and after 
death, doth exist and live, either by virtue of its spiritual and immortal nature, as 
we believe, or, at least, by the will of God, and His power upholding and preserving 
it from dissolution, as many of the fathers thought. This soul thus existing after 
death, and separated from the body, though of a nature spiritual, is really and truly 
in some place. . . . Again, the soul of man in that separate existence after death, 
must not be conceived to sleep, or be bereft and stripped of all its vital powers, but 
still to exercise the powers of understanding, and willing, and to be subject to the 
affections of joy and sorrow." 

I give these quotations only, but I might add many other " authorities " equal- 
ly entitled to the confidence of Christians — all, indeed, who believe that the Soul 
has continued existence, after what is called " Death." 

" Spiritualism teaches, on the authority of Scripture, and of all spirit-life, that 
there is no such thing as Death ; it is but a name given to the issue of the Soul from 
the body." — William Howitt. 

" There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body." — St. PAUL. 
" Dust thou art, to dust returnest, 
Was not spoken of the Soul." 



HER FIFTIETH WEDDING-DAY. 



$77 



Wisely upright yourself, you have been mainly instrumental in 
making me wisely upright. I should have shrunk from wrong-doing 
if from no better motive than that of dread to sink in your good 
opinion ; you have given me a far better motive — that which arises 
from faith in the Redeemer, and faith and trust in God. 

" Well I know we shall be together — inseparable — for ever and 
ever ! that you will be to me in Heaven what you have been to me 
on earth. 

" God bless you, my soul's darling : the love of my youth, the 
love of my age : more beautiful in my sight to-day than you were 
fifty-six years ago. Such adoration as I may rightly render to a fel- 
low-mortal who will be immortal, I render to you : praying God to 
bless us both ; blessing me in blessing you, and blessing you in bless- 
ing me." 

And this is the poem I addressed to her on the fiftieth anniver- 
sary of our wedding — in 1874 : 

" Yes ! fifty years of troubles — come and gone — 
I count, since first I gave thee hand and heart ! 
But none have come from thee, dear Wife — not one ! 
In griefs that saddened me thou had'st no part — 

Save when, accepting more than woman's share 

Of pain and toil, despondency and care, 
My comforter thou wert, my hope, my trust ; 
Ever suggesting holy thoughts and deeds : 
Guiding my steps on earth, through blinding dust, 
Into the Heaven-lit path that Heaven-ward leads. 

So has it been, from manhood unto age, 

In every shifting scene of Life's sad stage, 

Since — fifty years ago — an humble name 

I gave to thee — which thou hast given to fame — 

Rejoicing in the wife and friend to find 

The woman's lesser duties — all — combined 

With holiest efforts of creative mind. 

And if the world has found some good in me, 
The prompting and the teaching came from thee ! 

God so guide both that so it ever be ! 

So may the full fount of affection flow ; 
Each loving each as — fifty years ago ! 

We are going down the rugged hill of life, 

Into the tranquil valley at its base ; 

But, hand in hand, and heart in heart, dear Wife : 

With less of outer care and inner strife, 
I look into thy mind and in thy face, 
And only see the Angel coming nearer, 
To make thee still more beautiful and dearer, 
When from the thrall and soil of earth made free, 
Thy prayer is heard for me, and mine for thee ! " 
37 



578 HER TWENTIETH WEDDING-DAY. 

On our twentieth wedding-day (in 1844) I had addressed to her 
a poem of some length — of which I print a few passages : 

" Yes — beauty in that happy face 
The husband-lover still can trace ; 
Goodness, and gentleness, and truth, 

May live to mock at change and time ; 
They were the graces of thy youth — 

They are the graces of thy prime. 

We've toiled together side by side, 
Proud — yet it was no selfish pride — 
That toil brought honor, if no wealth ; 

Our hearts have gathered little rust ; 
But ours are peace, and hope, and health, 

And mutual love and mutual trust ! 

Companion, counsel, friend, and wife, 
Through twenty years of wedded life ! 
Dear love, sweet heart — why not address 

Warm words to thee— my hope and pride? 
I have not lived to love thee less, 

Than when I hailed a fair young bride. 

Ah ! let me think how deep a debt, 
Sweet friend, dear wife, I owe thee yet : 
In toil, in trouble, weak and ill, 

Thy zealous care, thy active thought, 
Thy spirit — meekly trusting still — 

Calmed the hot pulse and brain o'erwrought. 

I gave to thee an humble name, 

Which thou, dear wife, hast given to fame : 

And surely 'tis no idle boast 

That many laud and flatter thee ; 
But when the world hath praised thee most, 

Thy woman's heart was most with me ! 

'Tis thine to prove that strength of mind 
May work, with woman's grace combined ; 
To show how Nature's debts are paid 

In studies small that sweeten life ; 
And how the loftiest thoughts may aid 

The duties of a loving wife." 

I print also some lines we both signed on our fifty-sixth anniver- 
sary — its last commemoration on earth : 

" Yes ! we go gently down the hill of life, 
And thank our God at every step we go : 
The husband-lover and the sweetheart-wife. 

Of creeping age what do we care or know ? 
Each says to each, ' Our fourscore years, thrice told, 
Would leave us young ' ; the Soul is never old ! 

What is the Grave to us ? can it divide 

The destiny of two by God made one ? 
We step across, and reach the other side, 

To know our blended Life is just begun, 



SPIRITUALISM. 

These fading faculties are sent to say 
Heaven is more near to-day than yesterday." 



579 



Twenty-four days after my letter was written she was removed 
from me, from the many dear friends who loved her, and from a 
" public " by whom she had been largely appreciated since the publi- 
cation of her first book in the far-off year 1828. 

From what I have said concerning so-called " Spiritualism," in 
recalling memories of Lord Lytton, Sergeant Cox, Robert Chambers, 
William Howitt, and others, the reader will have no doubt that I am 
a believer in the reality of the phenomena known as spiritualism. So 
was Mrs. Hall ; as thoroughly and entirely as I am. 

It is a very long list — I might print of persons, entitled to all 
trust, who believe as I do in the phenomena. It has been well said 
by an eminent Roman Catholic divine, " It is quite impossible that 
about such facts such a cloud of witnesses should be all deceived "; 
and by a Protestant clergyman of high rank, " Testimony has been 
so abundant and consentaneous, that either the facts must be such 
as they are reported, or the possibility of certifying facts by human 
testimony must be given up." 

I do not intend to give any details as to the evidence by which 
belief in spiritualism is sustained ; it would demand treatment at 
some length, for which I have no space : moreover, it would be dis- 
tasteful to many of those who I expect will be my readers. Such tes- 
timony may be easily obtained by those who require it ; there are 
six periodical representative publications, and some hundreds of 
printed books that give it fully. In treating the subject here, I shall 
merely strive to answer the question why should there be any doubt 
that the spirits of those who have been in the "natural body" can 
and do communicate, when in the "spiritual body," with the beloved 
of earth who are yet remaining on earth, to be removed thence to 
another state when what is called " Death " releases them from earth- 
bonds ? 

I make no appeal, no effort at conviction, no attempt at inducing 
inquiry on the part of those who have no belief in Hereafter — " the 
immortality of the Soul." But to those who believe in both I put 
a simple question. Where is the Soul when it has ceased to be 
linked with a perishable body — a body that is not the same to-day 
as it was yesterday, and will ultimately be restored to the elements 
that compose it ? 

It is not enough for me to say I have had palpable convincing 
and conclusive evidence that those we call the " dead " are " living," 
and can and do communicate with us — those who are yet living. I 
have had such evidence, not once, but many hundred times, in various 



580 AUTHORITIES FOR THE FAITH. 

places and countries, in the presence of persons who had never 
before met, and were totally unknown each to the other, under cir- 
cumstances that rendered collusion out of the question and fraud an 
impossibility — such intercouse with " spirits " continuing to be re- 
peated year after year for more than thirty years. 

" We speak what we do know, and testify what we have seen " ; 
and if we are answered by him who will " answer a matter before he 
heareth it," I can but say, as the wise king said, " It is folly and 
shame unto him." 

Spiritualists, then, demand to be heard on the ground that their 
antecedents are such as to justify confidence — confidence in their 
integrity and in their capacity for arriving at correct conclusions 
based on the evidence of their senses, sustained by their intelligence ; 
because they have subjected Spiritualism to such tests as the 
Almighty has given them by which to detect error and discover 
truth ; because these things are not done in a corner ; because 
alleged facts are attested by tens — nay, by hundreds — of thou- 
sands, who have witnessed them at various times, in several places, 
now in one company, now in another ; testified to, not by " igno- 
rant and unlearned men," but by men and women of capacious 
minds, and of great experience in all the affairs of life — sound and 
practical thinkers ; who affirm that if their testimony on this subject 
is not to be accepted by just and intelligent judges, it must be con- 
sidered worthless for any purpose by any public or private tribunal 
— that they are unfitted for the discharge of any of the duties of 
citizens, because of either cupidity, deliberate imposture, mental 
incapacity, or continuous self-delusion. 

The highest authorities in the Church of England, and the ora- 
cles of the Dissenters from that Church, contend that " miracles " 
have not ceased, but that they continue to be wrought, not only by 
good angels, but by evil spirits. Thus wrote Bishop Hall : " So sure 
as we see men, so sure we are that holy men have seen angels." And 
thus Archbishop Tillotson : " The angels are no more dead or idle 
than they were in Jacob's time or in our Saviour's, and both good 
and bad spirits are each in their way busy about us." Bishop 
Beveridge contends that " though we can not see spirits with our 
bodily eyes, we may do so when they assume, as they sometimes do, a 
bodily shape." I have already quoted Bishop Pearson. 

Among Nonconformists there are many authorities equally con- 
vincing and conclusive. Baxter, in reference to apparitions, says, 
" I have received undoubted testimony of the truth of such." Isaac 
Watts reasons that " the appearance of apparitions is a strong proof 
of an intermediate state, whence they can return for special divine 
purposes." The venerable founder of Methodism contends not only 
that good and evil spirits worked in the apostolic times, but that they 
are as busy now as they were then — to lead and to mislead, to enlist 



THE FUTURE OF THE SOUL. 



581 



soldiers under the banner of Christ, and to augment the armies of 
Satan ! 

" Millions of spiritual beings walk the earth, 
Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep." 

Such was the faith of John Milton. I might fill many pages with 
" authorities." 

" Progress " is the universal law of both worlds. Responsibility 
never ceases — here or Hereafter. Where Progress ends who will dare 
to say, or guess or speculate as to the " many mansions " into which 
there may be many removals ? 

If there be not annihilation of all we associate with the Soul, 
there must outlive this life, affection, memory, reflection, comparison, 
intelligence — to use a familiar word, Reason : surely these faculties 
are not lost or lessened, but vastly strengthened in the Soul after its 
removal from the body. They must be exercised : there must be a 
continual recurrence to the events of this life : there must be mean- 
ing in the words " well done good and faithful servant," and in these 
— "depart from me, ye wicked." Only by the unlimited exercise of 
these powers could there be reward and punishment : without them 
" Hereafter " would be a sound " signifying nothing ! " 

" For MEMORY lives — of what thou wert and art — 
In ' many mansions ' where the Soul may dwell : 
And to remember is of Heaven a part, 
As to REMEMBER is a part of Hell." 

If the Soul, on its departure from the body, its sometime taber- 
nacle — the house in which it has dwelt — loses all consciousness of a 
past, what can be its future ? If it cease to take any interest in 
things of earth, if the affections are to die when the body dies, and 
although parents, children, friends, while " living," enjoy the bliss 
that memory brings, the Souls removed are denied all such sources 
of happiness — surely, to maintain such a doctrine would go very far 
to destroy all honor and glory to God, all faith and trust in Him, in 
His justice and His mercy, and all the hope that sustains more or 
less every human being born into the world, and what is, so espe- 
cially, the blessing of the Christian. 

Yes : Spiritualism progresses, and will continue to progress. 
There are now millions where, twenty-five years ago, there were 
scores. To " stop " it is impossible ; as easy would it be to stay the 
inflow of Ocean by a wall of shingles. Our pastors and teachers 
leave the mighty power for good — or for evil — in the hands of those 
who will use, to abuse, it — who do use, and do abuse, it. I solemnly 
warn such as are inquirers, neophytes, or acolytes, to avoid, as they 
would contact with a plague-spot, fellowship and communing with 
" mediums " who, under the sway, influence, and dictation of spirits, 



582 



A BLESSED FAITH. 



low, or base, or evil, inculcate principles repugnant to natures that 
are good — and sometimes teach " Doctrines of Devils." 

It is a blessed faith ! that keeps us ever watchful, knowing our- 
selves to be perpetually watched : that gives us conclusive and con- 
tinual evidence how very thin are the partitions that separate this 
world from " the next " — the next, where ingratitude is a crime, and 
" sins of omission " exact penalties as do " sins of commission " : 
where those who, having neglected their " talent," are guilty as those 
who misuse it. " Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of these, ye did 
it not unto me," implies condemnation for opportunities neglected, 
as well as abused. 

" For what we will, yet lack the power to do, 
Be it for good or ill, God counts as done." 

It is a blessed faith ! that brings closer and nearer those whom 
death has not — even for a time — separated from us : that makes 
" certain sure " the actual presence of those we love ; sharing our 
daily walks : our hourly talks : watching us with hopeful love : par- 
ticipating in all our anxieties : in all our joys : guiding us, helping 
us, averting from us evil and the influence of evil : bringing around 
and about us the holy and the good : giving us a foretaste of that 
" overpowering of delight " of which the poet speaks : bringing pal- 
pably to our hearts and minds " the substance of things hoped for : 
the evidence of things not seen " : and prompting to continual 
prayer, that when our Lord cometh He may find our lamps bright 
and burning in the Household of Faith. 

It is a blessed Faith ! that enhances a thousand-fold the joy that 
is given by the Christian dispensation ; that removes all doubts of 
hereafter — answering the prayer (I quote the most beautiful of our 
church collects) : " O everlasting God, who hast ordained and con- 
stituted the services of angels and men in a wonderful order ; merci- 
fully grant that as Thy holy angels always do Thee service in heaven, 
so by Thy appointment they may succor and defend us on earth, 
through Jesus Christ our Lord." 

I conclude this brief summary of my views concerning spiritual- 
ism with fervent thankfulness to God for the blessing it has been — 
and is — to me. I do not touch on kindred themes that can not be 
approached with sufficient reverence — even here. It must suffice to 
say I know that the souls of those who loved us, while with us on 
earth, can, and do, hold communication with us now that they are in 
heaven. I know it is well as I know the plainest and simplest truths 
— as well as I know there are four fingers and a thumb on my right 
hand. I know also that such faith is not only consistent with the 
Christian religion — sustained — nay, inculcated — by the Divine word 
— but that without it there can be no .vital Christianity. 



HER BURIAL. 583 

The " natural body " of Mrs. S. C. Hall was laid in the church- 
yard at Addlestone on February 5 th. It is a village in Surrey, 
where the happiest years of our life were spent.* The coffin was of 
oak, grown in her native Bannow — the scene of her early Irish 
" sketches." It was an old chest, brought by her family to England 
in 1815. She had often expressed a wish to be buried in it — and 
was : in its altered character. 

At the grave-side a group of little children sang a hymn ; they 
came from the school close by, which school she, in 1855, built. It 
is an infant school. 

The church is clothed with ivy almost to the summit. That ivy 
we planted with our own hands, bringing it (in 1856), for the pur- 
pose, from all-beautiful Killarney. 

Among the few friends, honored and beloved, present, was Sir 
Theodore Martin, who brought me a gracious message of condolence 
from the Queen — God bless her ! — and also a chaplet to place upon 
the grave. 

There was an abundance of flowers and wreaths sent by loving 
friends : but I did not suffer them to be crushed to premature death 
by heaping clay upon them in a grave that was not theirs. Before 
the coffin was lowered " they were removed, and conveyed to the 
children's school-room, to give a little more healthful joy before 
their natural death. 

I quote two passages from a touching and beautiful poem, " A 
Plea of the Flowers," written by our valued and much-loved friend 
Mrs. Newton Crosland : 

" How have we sinned, that we should be consigned 
To the dank grave and sepulchre of stone, 
In darkness doomed to wither, one by one, 
Where sense is dulled and close-shut eyes are blind ? 

" Send us to homes where poverty has sway ; 
Send us to school-rooms, and to places where 
The sick and suffering bear their load of care ; 
Send us where eyes can see and hearts can pray." 

* In our grounds, if so I may term a somewhat extensive lawn at Addlestone, 
it was our custom, whenever a distinguished visitor was our guest, to get him, or 
her, to plant a tree. The place was named Firfield, so a small tree-shrub of that 
kind was always ready to be transferred from a flower-pot to the ground. Trees 
were thus planted by Bulwer, Dickens, Lady Morgan, Mrs. Jameson, Frederika 
Bremer, Thomas Moore, Samuel Lover, Jenny Lind, William Macready, Mary 
Howitt, Mrs. Beecher Stowe, and others. The trees are now as high as the house. 
Moreover, I built a conservatory, seventy feet long. It contained some twenty 
statues by eminent British sculptors, and some by sculptors of Germany and 
France ; while the wall was covered with the best bas-reliefs of the period. I re- 
joice to know that my successor, a man of taste, estimated them as I did ; and that 
it is still one of the most charming residences in the richly beautiful county of 
Surrey. 



RECOLLECTIONS— PERSONAL. 

A few incidents of my life I shall give in this chapter : but nothing 
like an autobiography. In fact, much of what I might think I ought 
to say I have already said : my own story is so closely interwoven 
with the stories I have had to tell of things I have seen and people I 
have known, that to give it here at length would be to incur the 
charge of needlessly repeating myself. I shall be contented, there- 
fore, with detaching from my life's history a few episodes, that mark 
various stages of the long path I have trodden. I am mistaken if 
there be not a desire in all readers of a book of Personal Recollec- 
tions to know something of the Author. 

I was born at Geneva Barracks, in the county of Waterford * 
(where my father's regiment was then quartered), about six miles 
from the " urbs intacta manet Waterfordia" on the 9th of May, 1800 : 
and if any person is disposed to cast my horoscope, I can tell him 
that my first breath on earth was drawn at daybreak. My mother 
has told me that the reveilti was sounding as I was ushered into the 
world. I ought, therefore, to have been a soldier : a fate from which 
I had a narrow escape. 

My father died at Chelsea on the 10th of January, 1836. He 
entered the army as ensign, by purchase, in the 7 2d Regiment, in 
1780, and shortly afterward joined his regiment at Gibraltar, where 
he continued to serve during the remaining period of the memorable 
siege. In 1794 he embodied a regiment for service within the United 
Kingdom, and raised it in the unprecedentedly short space of eleven 
weeks from the date of receiving the order, displaying an activity of 
mind and energy of character that have seldom been surpassed.! 

* I have in a commonplace-book of my father's this entry: " Robert Hall, a 
native of the city of Exeter, was born June 20, 1753. Ann Kent was born at Ottery 
St. Mary, in the county of Devon, on the 30th of September, 1765. Robert Hall 
and Ann Kent were married at Topsham, in the county of Devon, April 6, 1790." 
Their issue was seven sons and five daughters, nine of whom were born at Topsham : 
three in Ireland, while the regiment was quartered there. 

\ The Exeter historian, Jenkins (1806), states that in Devonshire there were 
two Fencible Regiments ordered to be raised. That for which Colonel Stribling was 



THE IRISH MINES. 585 

Immediately upon the completion of the regiment, thenceforth 
denominated the " Devon and Cornwall Fencibles," it was ordered 
on active service to Ireland, where it devolved upon its colonel to 
mold the crude mass of heterogeneous materials into an effective 
and disciplined regiment.* The regiment served in Ireland from 
the commencement of 1795 tm * tne middle of 1802, with credit and 
efficiency, having frequently received the marked commendations of 
the general officers in command of districts. The Honorable W. M. 
Maitland was its lieutenant-colonel. The regiment returned to 
England in 1802, when, on the reduction of the army, consequent 
on the "Peace of Amiens," it was disbanded. 

In raising his regiment, it was a first requirement that it should be 
done quickly. He therefore enlisted any one who offered ; no recruits 
were either too young or too old. An aged father or uncle brought 
with him his sons or nephews. The latter would not enlist unless 
their elders did so. Gradually the old men obtained their discharge, 
the youths grew into young men, and ultimately the regiment was 
one of the best in the service. A large proportion of it volunteered 
into the Line, and no doubt became efficient, as they were well-trained 
and well-taught soldiers.f 

The Copper Mines. — As I have elsewhere stated, Colonel Hall, 
while quartered in Ireland, was tempted, chiefly by the circumstance 
of many of his soldiers being Cornish miners, to embark in mining 
speculations. They were highly beneficial to the country, but in the 
end ruinous to himself. Of thirteen mines he opened, the most impor- 
tant was that on Ross Island, Killarney, from which ore to the value of 
nearly ;£ 100,000 was obtained. After giving employment for a con- 
commissioned was a failure, while that of Colonel Hall was a signal success. I quote 
the historian : " By vigorous and prudent exertions, he soon completed his quota of 
men, and they were regimented under the name of Devon and Cornwall Fencibles. 
Just after they were embodied they were ordered to Ireland, where they continued 
during the remainder of the war, and by strict discipline and good behavior they 
not only preserved the tranquillity of the southwestern parts of that kingdom, but 
gained the esteem of the inhabitants in every station they were quartered at." I 
learn, too, from a subsequent passage in Jenkins's valuable book, that " Colonel 
Stribling (after spending a large sum of money) failed in his endeavors to complete 
a regiment by the time agreed upon, and those enlisted by him were drafted into, 
and incorporated with, other corps." 

* It was one of six Fencible Regiments ordered to be raised by the Duke of 
York, to serve in any part of the British Islands. They differed from the Militia, 
who were at that time limited, in their service, to their native counties, and essen- 
tially from the Volunteers, who were then, as they are now, only a force to be called 
into operation — and to be " aye ready " — when needed. 

f I remember seeing a quizzical caricature — two venerable women dressed semi- 
military, with the cockade in their bonnets. A passer-by was addressing them. 
On being told they belonged to the Devon and Cornwall Fencibles, he asked the 
natural question, " What ! does Colonel Hall enlist women ? " " No, sir ; only us 
two." " And what are you for ? " " Oh, sir, we are to nurse the old men and 
children ! " was the answer. But my father's object was effected. 



586 THE IRISH MINES. 

siderable time to hundreds of men, women, and children, that mine 
was eventually ruined by the bursting in of the water of the Lakes.* 
It was not the only one he worked in the neighborhood of Killarney. 

At Ross Island was found unquestionable evidence of previous 
workings by prehistoric races — many stone hammers, and the re- 
mains of charcoal-fires, obviously lit to extract the veins of ore from 
the limestone in which they were imbedded. I recently gave one of 
the hammers to the Exeter Museum. 

The following incident is, I think, worth printing : While walking 
in the neighborhood of his residence at Glandore (I was with him at 
the time), my father noticed some fish-bones of a green hue among 
turf-ashes. His curiosity was excited to discover by what means 
they had become of so singular a color, and, on analyzing them, he 
found they contained copper. His next object was to ascertain 
where the copper came from. He speedily traced its source to the 
contact of the bones with the ashes of turf cut in a neighboring bog, 
and known to the peasanty as "the stinking bog." He was told that 
neither dog nor cat would live in the cabin in which the turf was 
burned. Having gathered so much information, his path was plain. 
He first collected from the heaps adjoining the cottages as large a 
quantity as he could of these copper-impregnated ashes, and shipped 
it to Swansea, where it brought, if I remember rightly, £8 or j£g a 
ton — a remunerative price. His second step was to take a lease of 
the bog, build kilns upon it, and burn the turf. That plan he con- 
tinued until the whole of the bog was consumed, and sent, to the 
extent of several hundreds of tons, to the Welsh smelting-houses, 
the ease with which it was smelted greatly enhancing its value. 

It was a curious sight, and one I recollect well, to see scores of 
workmen cutting the turf, conveying it to one kiln to dry, and then 
to another to be burned, while carts were bearing the ashes of that 
already burned to the river-side to be shipped for Wales. The par- 
ticles contained in the turf are supposed to have been conveyed 

* An attempt was vainly made to drain the mine by a steam-engine. I believe 
the engine was the first that was introduced into Ireland. The chimney-shaft 
may yet be seen in Ross Island. Other mining speculators in the district were 
equally unlucky. Chambers, in the " Book of Days," says that the author of 
" Baron Munchausen " was " a learned and scientific German named Rodolph Eric 
Raspe, and that he died in 1794 at Mucross, in the south of Ireland, while conduct- 
ing some mining operations there." I have never been able to obtain any informa- 
tion on the subject, but have no reason to doubt the accuracy of the statement. 
Raspe's sinking, I fancy, must have been a certain cobalt mine, abandoned after 
being worked for a short period. I know my father long sought to obtain a lease 
of that mine from Colonel Herbert, who strongly objected on the ground that it 
was within sight of his house. But ultimately Colonel Hall did obtain such lease. 
At that time cobalt was a costly mineral, and the produce of the mine was likely to 
enrich all parties. Just, however, as his hopes were most buoyant, a so much cheaper 
substitute was discovered that it, to a large extent, displaced the cobalt, except for 
the finer and most costly pieces at the Staffordshire potteries, and the mine at 
Mucross ceased to be worth working. 



PIONEERS IN MINING. 587 

into the bog by a stream from one of the surrounding hills, that, 
passing through a copper-vein, took them up in a state of sulphate, 
but meeting with some iron-ore in its progress, or in the bog, the 
copper became deposited in the metallic state, though a large pro- 
portion of the deposit was still in the form of sulphate, as was proved 
by allowing a knife to remain in the bog a few hours, when it be- 
came incrusted with a coat of copper. The working of this singular 
mine repaid my father for the capital and labor expended ; but, un- 
fortunately for him, when the bog was burned out, he considered 
operations as only commenced, his object being to discover the vein 
of ore by which the bog had been supplied with copper. In a vain 
search for the source, technically called the "lode," he expended all 
he had made by the sale of the ashes. Shafts were sunk in several 
of the surrounding hills, and he continued the pursuit until his 
capital was exhausted. 

I claim for my father the merit of having been a pioneer in the 
development of a source of profitable employment for Irishmen, and 
of immense wealth to Ireland. " Mining speculations " ruined him, 
as they have ruined many. The prosperity of the future, however, 
often dates from the misfortune of the past. During the years in 
which he conducted mining explorations, not only did he find em- 
ployment for hundreds of workers, and sell in Swansea vast quan- 
tities of ore, but he showed what might be accomplished under 
more auspicious circumstances, and his name should not be omitted 
in the list of those who have been benefactors to Ireland. 

In 1794 Ireland was almost as much terra incognita to the people 
of Devon as the Fiji Islands are to them now. The order that the 
regiment raised by my father should embark for the Green Isle was 
received with terror by the mothers of recruits, and the women gen- 
erally : a greater display of feeling could scarcely have been evoked 
by a sentence of transportation to Botany Bay. My mother was 
perpetually waylaid by applicants entreating " mercy " for a son, or 
brother, or for some one dearer than either. After all, it was not 
the Irishmen, but the Irishwomen, of whom the Devonshire recruits 
had reason to be afraid ; not the Pats and Jerrys who made havoc 
among them, but the dark eyes of the Norahs and Biddys. Warn- 
ings, expostulations, and punishments, were equally ineffectual to 
prevent the Fencibles from surrendering wholesale to such " foes " : 
within a few months after landing in Ireland nearly two hundred 
youths of the regiment were married men.* 

* Not very long ago, I met at Topsham an old man who told me his father had 
been a soldier in my father's regiment. I asked him what was his mother's maiden 
name. He answered, " Norah Mahoney." Clearly his father was one of the 
" victims." The priest of the parish frequently came to my father with such words 
as, " Colonel, you must let William So-and-so marry Biddy So-and-so " ; to which 
my father would angrily reply, " I will riot let another soldier in the regiment 



5 88 MY MOTHER. 

My most admirable mother — revered and honored be her mem- 
ory, for truly she was a good and heroic woman — conceived the idea 
of establishing a business in Cork. That was some years after my 
father had, by his mining speculations, lost all (and it was much) 
that he had to lose. In the city, where her husband had long com- 
manded the garrison, where she had many stanch and powerful 
friends, she so conducted that business as to be enabled to bring 
up her large family of children. Those who remember her — and 
they can not be many — will recall her as possessing personal advan- 
tages, in all senses of the word : a lady (as much so in adversity as 
in prosperity) upright, generous, just, teaching by example as well 
as precept the lessons that are received in youth to fructify with in- 
crease of years.* I have reason to be proud of my mother. So, 
indeed, I have of my good father : a better or more conscientious 
man, I think, never lived. Though he spent his substance, he did 
not waste it ; he enjoyed through a very long life the affection of his 
children and the respect of troops of friends. He survived my 
mother many years, and his ashes rest in Kensal Green cemetery, 
where there is a monument to his memory. \ He left me nothing 
but a name unstained : a better heritage than would have been a 
rich estate without that blessing. 

My eldest brother, Revis, was killed at the battle of Albuera, 
fought on the 16th of May, 1811. We heard the particulars of his 
death from a brother officer. He was a little fellow : indeed, he was 
very young, not quite eighteen ; and in the midst of the engagement 
he turned round to a tall officer who stood behind him and said, 

marry ! " The good priest would hum, and ha, and murmur, " Well, if ye don't, 
colonel — worse will come of it ! " Of course the Colonel's consent was extorted 
— for "positively the last time." 

* My mother died in Cork, of typhus fever, caught when visiting the stricken 
house of a poor dependent. I extract two or three passages with reference to that 
mournful event from a commonplace-book of my father's ; they illustrate her char- 
acter and his own : " For this happy union, and for my having met with so good a 
woman, I can never be sufficiently grateful and thankful to God Almighty. If my 
soul should be ' saved alive,' and I trust in the mercy of God it will be, under God 
it will be owing to my union with her. As her life was gentle and blameless, so 
her end was peaceful and quiet, and without doubt she is now in heaven, praising 
and glorifying her Maker and Redeemer, with saints and angels and the spirits of 
just men made perfect. Oh, shall I meet her there ? God grant that I may ! . . . 
I can not but feel and mourn the loss of so good a woman, so faithful a partner, 
and so true a friend ; a comforter and consoler upon so many trying occasions, a 
sharer with me of prosperity and of adversity : neither proud nor overbearing in 
the one, nor repining in the other. Without her for many years past what a mis- 
erable man should I have been ! Her resignation and mildness of temper often 
tempered mine, and reconciled me to myself." 

f The monument contains also the name of " Hannah Davey," the faithful and 
devoted servant of our family during upward of fifty years. There also is inscribed 
the name of Maria Louisa, the only child we had who lived : and her life on earth 
was very brief. We buried in 1865 another old servant, an Irishwoman, Alice 
Myers, who had been in our service over half a century. 



OTHER BROTHERS. 589 

" Harris, the ball that goes over my head will kill you." A few min- 
utes after he received a musket-ball in the forehead, and fell. In 
1845 I met at dinner the brother of Mrs. Hemans, Major Browne, 
who then held a high position in the Irish constabulary. He chanced 
to speak of the 23d. I said, "If you were in the 23d you may have 
known my brother." He told me that when, after the battle, they 
missed one who was the "pet of the regiment," he headed a corpo- 
ral's guard to search for the body, and found him on the field — 
stripped of his clothes by field-robbers. " I carried him in my arms 
to the hospital," added Major Browne, "and in my arms the next 
day he died." 

In Cork, it was known that a great battle had been fought, and 
the Gazette that gave the list of killed and wounded was eagerly and 
tremblingly looked for. A copy had been received at the post-office. 
My father went there to learn the news. Pale as death he returned 
to where we were all waiting together, and his words as he entered 
were, " Let us pray." Even the youngest of the group knew what 
the words meant. With prayers that were sobs, we submitted to the 
will of God : my father breathing something of the feeling of the old 
French marshal, who, when the body of his eldest-born was brought 
to him, murmured, through the tears that fell on the slain youth, " I 
would not exchange my dead son for any living son in Christen- 
dom." 

I am indebted to the kindness and courtesy of the Rev. Mr. 
Bartlett for a series of entries, copied from the church registry, from 
which it appears my father had nine children born at Topsham and 
three in Ireland, all of whom lived to manhood or womanhood, 
excepting one. Of my two elder brothers, William Sanford, born at 
Cork, in 1795 — having for some years prior to his death dwelt at 
Topsham — died in 1877, at the ripe age of eighty-two. 

His life was not an idle life. On leaving the army (on half-pay) 
he devoted his time and energies to forming and establishing a Me- 
chanics' Institute (a then new invention) in Cork. He was also for 
many years assistant-editor of the United Service Magazine, and orig- 
inated, if he did not found, the United Service Museum. 

The third of my elder brothers, Robert Revis, was born at Ross 
Castle, on the romantic and ever beautiful Lake of Killarney. The 
castle was then a barrack, and not very long ago I ascertained, by 
convincing evidence, the room in which he first saw the light. He 
was, although a renowned swimmer, drowned on a calm moonlight 
night, off the Cape of Cood Hope, in 1822, I think. It is supposed 
that he fell overboard, and was seized by a shark before time was 
given him to make an alarm. He had quitted the navy, in which 
he was a midshipman, and was then chief mate of an East India 
trader. His whole life was a romance. He was thrice shipwrecked, 
and once lived for three months on an uninhabited island. He 



5S>o 



THE BATTLE OF TRAFALGAR. 



fought with the Greeks against the Turks, and with the Turks 
against the Greeks : he was a leader in the Mexican War for Inde- 
pendence. It is deeply to be regretted that he left no details con- 
cerning his career. I may, however, describe him as a man of the 
highest sense of honor ; and, notwithstanding his recklessness, always 
in high favor with his commanding officers. 

The farthest removed of my memories carries me back to the 
period of the most glorious of Britannia's sea-fights — immortal Tra- 
falgar. I remember it distinctly, partly because of the following in- 
cident : At Topsham, in Devonshire (where my father then resided) 
in common with all the cities, towns, and villages, of the United 
Kingdom, there was a general illumination. My father's house was, 
of course, lit up from cellar to attic ; in each pane of glass there was 
a candle — the holder being a potato, in which a hollow had been 
scooped, to supply the place of a candlestick. The universal joy 
was blended with mourning : Nelson was dead, and in losing him 
the nation had paid dearly for victory. My father had, therefore, 
twisted a binding of black crape round each candle — emblematic of 
the grief that had saddened the triumph. Few are now living who 
shared with me the sight of the rejoicings blended with mourning 
that commemorated the 21st of October, 1805. 

In the September of 1881 I visited Topsham, the port of Exeter, 
in Devonshire. Former acquaintance with the town dated, as I 
have intimated, a very long way back : yet it was fresh in my mem- 
ory as if barely a year had passed since the last day I spent there, as 
a boy. I visited first the house (it is the Manor House) that was so 
long our home, and where nine of my brothers and sisters were born 
between the years 1792 and 1807. I entered every room ; each was 
as familiar to me as if I had seen it yesterday — every path, step, 
porch, door, " where once my careless childhood strayed," though I 
had not seen them for upward of seventy years. I recognized in 
the flowers descendants of those that had gladdened my childhood ; 
at least, I fancied they were such. Once, there was in the yard a 
large chestnut-tree, which, in its fruit season, tempted the boys to 
" rob " : without any very heavy penalty, I am sure ; but a poor lad 
fell from one of its branches, and was killed. My father then ordered 
the tree to be cut down. The school I attended up to my eighth 
year is now a dwelling let out in apartments ; the playground bor- 
ders the churchyard, and the latter has absorbed much of the for- 
mer. A mantle of venerable ivy still adorns the wall of the old 
house : the ivies were old when I was young. 

My main purpose in visiting my old home was one that I think 
my readers will care to hear of : the memories it revived were such 
as to make me proud of the name I bear. 



THE COLORS OF THE REGIMENT. 



591 



When the Devon and Cornwall Fencibles, commanded by my 
father, was disbanded in 1802, he presented the colors of the regi- 
ment to his parish church. They had remained over the altar for 
just seventy years, when the vicar sold them. Certainly the proceeds 
went to restore the ancient and venerable structure ; but the act was 
utterly inexcusable — to say the least. I resolved, if possible, to dis- 
cover what had become of those colors, in the dim hope of replacing 
them in the church. I found they had been purchased by a Major 
Keating, an Irishman and a Roman Catholic, whose hall they then 
adorned, and by whom they were greatly prized. He generously 
offered to present them to me. I tendered to him the sum he had 
given for them ; but he declined to receive it. I had the happiness 
to spend a week with him and his estimable lady at their beautiful 
dwelling, Westwood, near Teignmouth (her grandparents were rela- 
tives of my mother), during which visit arrangements were made for 
the restoration of the colors to the church, the present vicar of which 
— the Rev. John Bartlett — was as anxious to receive as I was to re- 
store them.* 

It was a proud and happy day for me when such presentation 
took place — on the 20th of September, 1881, the fifty-seventh anni- 
versary of my wedding-day. 

I walked from the old Salutation Inn (the inn that was my 
father's headquarters when recruiting the regiment in 1794^ and 
which in all important features remains unchanged), leaning on the 
arm of Major Keating, on either side a sergeant-major of the volun- 
teer artillery (each bearing one of the flags), followed by many of 
the present Devon volunteers and large numbers of the townsfolk. 
We were received by the vicar ; the church was full. Mr. Bartlett 
preached a sermon appropriate to the occasion ; I unrolled the 
colors and placed them on the altar. Over that altar they now rest ; 
and there, where they had reposed through so many years that are 
gone, they will continue, I hope, to meet the eyes of the men and 
women of Devonshire through generations to come. They will re- 
main, I trust (to borrow the words of Mr. Bartlett to the congrega- 
tion), " where their children's children may see them — to hang there 
till they crumble into dust." 

My share in the proceedings of that day will be, there is very 
little doubt, the last public act of my life. Surely the public life of 
any man could not have been more gracefully or more happily con- 
cluded. For with those colors are connected associations of which 
the counties of Devon and Cornwall may well be proud. There is 

* It is a somewhat singular fact that the vicar of Topsham who consecrated the 
flags in 1794 was also named Bartlett. 

f I had to express much regret that Sir Stafford Northcote was unable to attend 
the ceremony. He had expressed a great desire to be present on the occasion, if 
at all possible, and to bring with him his grandfather's commission as a captain of 
yeomanry, granted in 1794. 



592 



THE IRISH REBELLION. 



not the stain of a single drop of blood on those banners of the Devon 
and Cornwall Fencibles. War is ever a horror ; but no Christian 
man or woman can look at those flags in the church at Topsham 
without the reverence of love and honor. They dignify and grace 
the temple in which peace and good-will are preached. 

During the Irish Rebellion of 1798 the regiment was quartered 
in one of the most disaffected Irish counties — Kerry. Under the 
considerate and humane sway of my father, well seconded by the 
mingled forbearance and firmness of his men, not a si?igle life was 
taken in the district over which he ruled with almost autocratic power. 
Nor was any officer or man of the Fencibles so much as ill-treated, 
I think, during the time the regiment was quartered in "wild Kerry." 
To all who have read of the horrors elsewhere perpetrated in Ire- 
land — both by rebels and loyalists — during that unhappy year, 
such a record will be eloquent. * The colors presented by my 
father to Topsham church — that I was the happy means of restor- 
ing to their resting-place within the sacred walls — are more hal- 
lowed by the memories connected with them than they would 
have been if they had been carried in triumph over the reddest 
fields of victory. f 

My father, no doubt, had the feeling I have toward Ireland — 
that of sympathy with her people — and could make allowance for 

* In Ireland, in 1798, there were two other Fencible regiments : the " Ancient 
Britons " (Welsh) and the Caithness Fencibles (Scottish). They managed matters 
very badly indeed ; were perpetually at feud with the people ; killed whenever 
they were provoked ; and were slaughtered whenever they were met — singly or in 
small bands. 

f I may add here an anecdote that has a very direct bearing on the above tribute 
to the memories of my father and his regiment. In 1816, while residing at Bally- 
dehob, where my father was carrying on his disastrous copper-mines — disastrous to 
him, but very beneficial to Ireland — a friend lent me a horse on which I rode to 
Bantry. I remained three days at an inn there, and when I thought my purse 
exhausted, called for my bill. " Sir," said the waiter. " there's no bill." So I sent 
for the landlord to explain. He met my demand by a half-angry rejoinder. " Sir," 
he said, " no son of your father shall ever pay a shilling in my house, and I hope 
you will stay as long as you can." He answered my request for explanation, " I'll 
not tell you, but ask your father." Of course I did so, and, after raking his mem- 
ory, he told me that the landlord kept the inn in 1798, and had been very kind, 
attentive, and serviceable to him. My father had received secret intelligence that 
the man, a captain of rebels, had arranged on a certain night to attack a certain 
house, into which several soldiers had therefore been introduced in private clothes. 
But on the afternoon of the day, the landlord was arrested and conveyed to the bar- 
racks, no member of his family being cognizant of the arrest. He was imprisoned 
in a room whence there could be no communication with the outside. The rebels 
met, but where was their captain ? None could tell. For that night they post- 
poned the attack. The next night it was the same ; the third night, finding their 
captain again absent, and not knowing why, how, or where, they relinquished their 
project. The landlord was released, returned to his house, and was made aware of 
the cause of his imprisonment, but for which he was certain to have been either 
shot or hung. Hence his words — twenty years after the rebellion, "Sir, no son 
of your father shall ever pay a shilling in my house ! " 



THE FRENCH IN BAN TRY BAY. 593 

their being goaded into rebellion by the action, on excitable tem- 
peraments, of shameful and oppressive laws. 

He was, as Mr. Bartlett, on the day of the restoration of the 
colors to Topsham church, in his address, described him : " A good 
man, a religious man, a faithful member of the Church of England, 
true to his God, loyal to his sovereign, and loving to all human 
kind." 

I know it was with him, all his life, a subject of earnest thank- 
fulness to God, that, while he held military command in disaffected 
Kerry, with the peasantry everywhere ready and willing to rebel, 
and with civil war actually raging in other parts of Ireland, he had 
maintained order without spilling a drop of blood. 

The French in Bantry Bay. — In 1796, when the French at- 
tempted to land in Bantry Bay, my father's regiment was quartered 
in Kerry and in the west of the county of Cork — the headquarters 
being at Killarney. 

He received orders from the general commanding at Cork to 
proceed to Bantry Bay, and " prevent the landing of the French." 
All the troops he could muster numbered seven hundred men — 
principally raw recruits. If the French had landed there would 
have been a seasoned army of ten thousand to oppose those seven 
hundred. I have heard my father say that no other course was open 
to him than to have fired one volley, in obedience to orders, and 
then have surrendered his small force as prisoners of war. His own 
counsel was that his men should be employed to break up the roads 
between Bantry and Cork, and so arrest the progress of the invaders 
to that city. I have heard my mother describe the state in which 
she was left in Ross Castle, without a single soldier for protection ; 
but I hope, and I think, also, that the people, among whom her lot 
was at that dismal period cast were far more inclined to protect than 
to annoy her, and that she was as safe as she would have been amid 
the garrison of Cork. 

The result of the effort of France to obtain possession of Ireland 
belongs to history. I have often heard my mother describe the ter- 
rible storm of December the 23d, 1796, which scattered the French 
fleet, and destroyed several of the ships. None of the invading 
troops landed, except, I believe, thirteen, who were conveyed pris- 
oners to Cork, together with a carriage of singular construction, rich- 
ly gilt and decorated. That was the only trophy of victory ; it be- 
came the subject of a song sung in the streets and roads, the burthen 
of which was — 

" And so they tuk the coach 

Intinded for General Hoche." 

* 

So ended danger from that source. It is hard to say how the at- 
tempt would have terminated but for the tempest that so thoroughly 
defeated it. 

38 



594 



AN INCIDENT IN CORK. 



At that time, however, the Irish, it is certain, were neither pre- 
pared nor willing to receive the French. Dr. Moylan, the Roman 
Catholic bishop of the diocese, in a pastoral, urged the people to 
repel the invaders, entreating his flock to bear in mind " the sacred 
principles of loyalty, allegiance, and good order." 

" We have been now," wrote Wolfe Tone in his diary, " six days 
in Bantry Bay, within five hundred yards of the shore, without being 
able to effectuate a landing ; we have been dispersed four times in 
four days, and out of forty-three sail we can muster but fourteen." 

Repelled by the elements, and not by any force assembled for 
the protection of the Irish coast, the baffled invaders at length re- 
tired. Had the sailing of the armament been delayed until two 
years later, the results of such an attempt might have been very 
different. In 1798 the French would have found the peasantry 
friendly, whatever their reception from the winds and waves might 
have been. 

An Incident in a Life. — I extract the following from a Cork 
newspaper, 1876: "On Sunday, July 9th, there entered Christ 
Church, Cork, and took a seat where his family (an English family, 
some time resident in that city) a very long time ago worshiped — a 
white-headed man, who held in his hand a prayer-book, one of those 
presented to the young of both sexes by an " Association " formed 
at the beginning of the century " for Promoting the Knowledge and 
Practice of the Christian Religion." It contained his name and an 
engraved tablet ; it was awarded to him as a prize at a competitive 
examination in that church, and bore the date 181 2. Sixty-four 
years have passed since then : he had kept the prayer-book all that 
time. He read from it the service — substituting the name of Queen 
Victoria for that of King George III.; and gave thanks to God for 
the blessings of a long, a successful, a happy, and a very busy life : 
the fruit, these blessings may have been, of seed planted by the book 
given to him — sixty-four years before that memorable day in his life's 
history. The white-headed man was Mr. S. C. Hall." 

Yes : in that parish church, in that very pew, I received that 
prayer-book as a prize in a competition with nineteen other boys in 
the year 181 2. Who can say how much of the seventy years of my 
after-life has been ruled and guided by the event of that memorable 
day ? I must have read, and studied much, the Holy Scriptures to 
have been the one who won in the race. The seed then planted 
could not but have borne fruit. The bread cast upon the waters 
must have returned to me after many days. The prayer book I shall 
bequeath to the Society in Dublin : for it still exists. 

Not long ago, I was in Bristol, where, in the years 1814 and 1815, 
my happy holidays were spent, a guest in the house of a dear friend, 
a famous surgeon of that city. My old schoolfellows were all dead 



A TESTIMONIAL PRESENTED. 



595 



and gone. I paced the streets striving to bring back the old familiar 
faces — in vain. 

There is no loneliness so utter as that of a populous city, where 
every face you meet is that of a stranger : no look of welcome, no 
word of greeting ! You are jostled by those you have never seen 
before, and will never see again. With their business of life you 
have nothing to do. If you dropped dead on the pavement, a 
thousand — after a brief look — would pass heedlessly on without a 
sigh. Talk of the lonesomeness of a desert ! It is by comparison 
joyous and populous : that which you see all about you ; if there are 
neither birds nor animals, there is the pure fresh air : there are the 
clouds : every step you take brings you nearer and nearer to some 
oasis : hope supplies you with water and with trees : you can think 
— and you can pray. In such solitudes angels and spirits are ever 
at hand — God is felt in the works of His creation. It can not be all 
barren where they are palpable and in sight : in sight either of eye 
or mind. You seem to be, if not really and truly, " out of human- 
ity's reach." Under the depressing influence of a stroll through the 
lonely streets of a populous city, one is perpetually forced to murmur 
the line of the poet Cowper — 

" Oh ! for a lodge in some vast wilderness ! " 

During six years I had chambers on a second floor in Lancaster 
Place, Strand. An architect of some eminence occupied the first 
floor. Toward the close of that period I met one morning a gen- 
tleman on the staircase, and addressed him : " Pray, sir, may I ask 
if your name is Curry ? " The reply was in the affirmative. " Then," 
I said, " let us shake hands, for though we have for six years been 
neighbors — dwellers in the same house — the one has never seen the 
other until to-day." That could only have happened in London, 
where men attend to their own business. I might have been coining 
base money in my rooms, and he forging bank-notes in his, for aught 
the one knew of the occupation of the other. 

Among the memories of recent years most cherished by Mrs. Hall 
and myself was one that has reference to the year 1874. I am bound 
to ask my readers to allow me some space in dealing with the gratify- 
ing episode in our lives, to which I refer. I condense what I wish 
to say regarding it — from a small pamphlet to which the occasion 
gave birth. 

In 1874 it was arranged by some honored private and public 
friends to present to us a Testimonal commemorating our Golden 
Wedding, and a large assemblage met with that view at the house of 
our friend the treasurer, Frederick Griffin, Esq., in Palace Gardens. 
The good Earl of Shaftesbury presided, and the presence of " one 
whose whole life had been employed in doing good," a servant of 
God, whose public career is the history of a series of benefits done 
to humanity — gave to the occasion grace, dignity, and force. The 



596 THE GOLDEN WEDDING. 

" committee " of a hundred and forty members included men and 
women of high rank and lofty social positions, leading men of letters, 
science, and art : and the list of subscribers numbered six hundred. 
A sum of nearly ^"i,6oo had been collected, the greater part of 
which was spent in the creation of an annuity for our joint lives ; 
that annuity I continue to enjoy. Added to the generous bounty of 
the Queen, it has averted from me a calamity by which so many men 
of letters are overtaken toward the close of their careers, and — in 
conjunction with my retiring pension from the Journal of which I 
was so long the conductor — has removed all dread of poverty in an 
extreme old age. To one of the oldest and most valued of our 
friends, George Godwin, F. R. S., was delegated the duty of present- 
ing to us this testimonial, the value of which was largely enhanced 
by the accompaniment of a beautifully bound album — bound by 
Marcus Ward, of Belfast — containing over five hundred letters 
received, from time to time, by the hon. secretary, Beauchamp Hals- 
well, J. P., any one of which would have been a reward to any public 
man who has ever lived. 

I give this extract from Lord Shaftesbury's address on the occa- 
sion : 

" Mr. Hall, fifty years ago, obeyed the great precept that ' it is not good for 
man to be alone.' He sought and found one of whom we know he is, and may 
well be, proud ; a helpmeet who has helped him largely during the whole of his 
career ; who brought to him a mine of good and refined taste, of healthy and 
invigorating influence, and who has herself given to the world a long series of 
publications, not only to amuse but to instruct, and greatly to elevate the 
mind. Her works are known and valued wherever our language is read. In 
my time I have witnessed three Jubilees : the first was that of the reign of 
George III, the second was that of the Bible Society. This is the third : I 
think I can see in it the completion of the other two : the completion of 
loyalty — a completion secured by piety and religion ; honoring the wedded 
life ; giving an example of that which is an undeniable truth — that domestic 
life, especially in the early wedded, and by the all-merciful Providence of God, 
is the refuge and stronghold of morality, the honor, dignity, and mainstay of 
nations. To sum up all in one very serious and solemn sentence, Mr. and Mrs. 
S. C. Hall, you have been lovely and pleasing in your lives. If it shall please 
God in His mercy, His wisdom, and His providence, that you shall be divided 
in your deaths, we pray, and we believe, that you will be again united in a 
blessed eternity." 

I must copy some portion of my reply : 
" A story is told of the Prophet Mahomet that when his young and beauti- 
ful wife, Ayesha, said to him, ' Surely you love me bettter than you loved the 
aged Khadijah, ' he replied, ' No, by Allah ! for she believed in me when 
nobody else did ! ' So I say of her who stands by my side ; I say more ; she 
has faith in me after fifty years. And this may be, and shall be, my boast ; 
she who knows me best loves me best — whatever is good in me, whatever 
is bad in me, no one but God can know so well. During all these years, we 
have, no doubt, passed through many struggles, encountering many difficul- 
ties, but overcoming them all by ' mutual love and mutual trust,' at once our 
spear and shield in our contests with the world. I would not laud her over- 



ROBERT VERNON. 597 

much ; the praise she values most is that which she receives when nobody is 
by; but this I must say, that though literature has been her profession, 
as it is mine, and though she has to show as its produce more than two 
hundred printed books, I know there is no one of the womanly duties she 
has neglected — the very humblest of them has been at all times her study 
and her care : she is, in truth, a ' very woman ' in all womanly avocations, 
pleasures, and pursuits ; but she has been none the less my companion, my 
friend, my counselor, my guide — I must say it here as I have said it else- 
where, and in verse — my comforter in all trouble, my helper in all difficulties, 
by whom I was ever prompted to think rightly and to act rightly ; by whose 
wise counsel, when I followed it, I was ever led to right from wrong. 

" I will not refer to the many books we have together produced, on so 
many and varied subjects : there is no one of them that was not intended to 
do good. Some of them have done good. Those that relate to Ireland cer- 
tainly have, by diminishing or removing prejudice and inducing the English to 
visit the country — believing that for every new visitor Ireland obtained a new 
friend. . . . Dear friends, we thank you fervently and earnestly for the 
honor you this day accord to us. I will not be so mock-modest as to say we 
have done nothing to deserve it. We have done our best to deserve it. That 
you think we deserve it we have indubitable proof. It is before us on that 
table, and is manifested by your presence here this day. It has been the 
guiding principle of my life (and surely if it has been mine it has been hers), 
that there is no happiness which does not make others happy : we can not 
possess it unless we share it. Well, I have my reward to-day, and so has she 
who stands by my side ; a reward for herself, and — well I know it — a double 
reward to her in the honor you accord to me I " 

There is a brief anecdote that will bear relating : though it might 
have " come in " better in another place. 

In 1848 I was a guest at Ardington, the seat of Robert Vernon, 
Esq. He was at that time in failing health, and died the following 
year. I knew him, and his collection of pictures, when he lived in 
Halkin Street, Grosvenor Place, and was made aware of his intention 
to bequeath his rich store to the nation. His pictures had cost him 
a small sum in comparison with their worth : he had bought them at 
the slender prices artists then expected for them. [I had some 
hopes of being able to supply a statement of what they actually did 
cost, but I have been disappointed.] Yet Mr. Vernon was anything 
but a haggler about the prices he paid. He was a bachelor who had 
amassed great wealth by dealings in horses, had held profitable 
"contracts," and been fortunate in supplying Government wants in 
that way. Probably he considered he thus contracted a debt to the 
country — that his collection of pictures gave him the power to repay. 
He had in aspect, form, and manner much of the sternness and self- 
confidence of those who are bred to control and subdue fierce ani- 
mals, and was a man whom few even of his human subordinates 
would have cared to disobey.* 

* I have fancied I could trace the immense boon I received when he accorded 
to me the privilege of engraving for the Art Journal 'the whole of his collected pic- 
tures, to a circumstance to which I, at the time, attached little importance. Some 



598 SOCIETY OF NOVIOMAGUS. 

The prosperity of the Art Journal is to be dated from the day 
when Mr. Vernon gave to me the boon : it was continued when her 
Majesty and the Good Prince bestowed upon me a boon of still 
greater magnitude. For many years before and after that event I 
was accorded the privilege of dedicating the Art Journal annually 
to the Prince Consort ; and after his death I was permitted to dedi- 
cate it to H. R. H. the Prince of Wales. I should not have again 
referred to the subject, but that it is my duty to say I note with ex- 
ceeding regret that from the volume for 1882 the name of his Royal 
Highness the Prince of Wales has been removed.* 

The Society of Noviomagus. — This society will be remem- 
bered by many who have been its guests : but nearly all its old mem- 
bers are removed by death. Of those whose names figure in the 
earlier lists, George Godwin and I only are left. 

The Society of Noviomagus was founded in consequence of a 
small party of Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries having agreed 
to make an excavation at Holwood, near Keston, in Kent, on the 
spot that is supposed by Stillingfleet and other antiquaries to be the 
Roman station of Noviomagus — mentioned in the itinerary of An- 
toninus. 

About a quarter of a mile from the Roman works called " Caesar's 
Camp " is a tumulus known, even at the present day, as the " War- 
bank," and here the party commenced operations. They discovered 
the foundations of a temple, and several ancient stone coffins, Roman 
remains, etc. These were described in a paper read before the So- 
ciety of Antiquaries on the 27th of November, 1828, by Alfred J. 
Kempe, followed by another paper by T. Crofton Croker. 

After a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries on the nth of 
December, 1828, a small party interested in the matter adjourned to 

years previously he had lent me a small picture by Bonington to engrave for the 
" Book of Gems." I got it copied, and soon afterward took it to him with the copy. 
They were both the same size, and that fact displeased him. He remarked that 
" one was so like the other, that the one might hereafter be sold as the other." He 
said : " So long as it remains in your hands I shall have no fear ; but hereafter it 
may go out of your hands." The truth and force of his remark struck me. I at 
once said, " I will effectually prevent that." I took my penknife from my pocket, 
and sliced the canvas of the copy thrice all across. To that unpremeditated act I 
fully believe I owe the interest he subsequently took in my welfare. 

* An impressive and comprehensive address has been recently delivered at 
Nottingham by George Wallis, F. S. A., so long the able "Keeper of the Art Col- 
lections at the South Kensington Museum," and during many years the Art master- 
teacher in the schools of Birmingham and Manchester. Mr. Wallis takes pre- 
cisely the view I take as regards the progress of Art and Art-manufactures in 
Great Britain during the last thirty or forty years. He records one singular fact 
that he has raked from the archives of the Royal Academy. In 1839, 14 works 
were sold, amounting in value to ,£1,118 lis., and in 1840, 13 works, returning 
,£946 2s. In 1872, 283 works were sold, the value of which was ,£22,900 ; in 1882, 
251 works, returning ^22,335. 



SOCIETY OF NOVIOMAGUS. 



599 



Cork Street, Burlington Gardens, and a society, to be called the 
" Society of Noviomagus " was then and there instituted, T. Crofton 
Croker, F. S. A., becoming its first president — " Lord High Presi- 
dent," as he is officially styled. Thus a social club was formed, the 
only qualification for membership being, as it continues to be, that 
the candidate must be an F. S. A. He is elected by ballot : but — 
the society being constituted on the topsy-turvy principle — in order 
to admit to its honors there must be in the voting a preponderance 
of " Noes." 

The society has ever since 1828 met six times in each year to 
dine together — originally at Wood's Hotel, Portugal Street, now at 
the Freemasons' Tavern, Great Queen Street.* 

On the death of Croker, William Wansey became president ; in 
1855, I succeeded Wansey, and on my retirement in 1881, B. W. 
Richardson, M. D., F. R. S., succeeded me. I had continued presi- 
dent, elected annually, during nearly twenty-five years. It is but 
natural that in writing of this social club in 1883, I should lament 
that its past is now indeed the past — rather than find food for cheer- 
fulness in its present. Its happier associations are for me connected 
with the " long ago." 

My later visits to the society were saddened — as I marked the 
vacancies caused by the departure of old friends, and foreboded 
the time that was not far off when I too should leave earth, and a 
time that has come when I should leave a society with which I had 
been associated during forty years, and during twenty-five of the 
forty as its president. 

The society has been always in high favor with its guests, among 
whom have been included a large number of the men of mark of 
the century — authors, artists, professors of science, eminent travel- 
ers, inventors, antiquaries, distinguished soldiers and sailors. To 
give a list of them, if I had the means of doing so, would be to 
occupy several pages of this book. My principal duty was, at each 
meeting, to propose the health of the visitors, and to do so in terms 
that painted each in colors the very reverse of truth ; for the gov- 
erning and peculiar rule of the society is that a speaker shall say 
what he does not mean, and mean what he does not say. This rule 
gave rise to much " fun," as will be readily credited when it is con- 
sidered who the guests of the society were, and often led to keen 
and happy contests of wit between assailant and assailed. As, how- 
ever, the society duly remembers its origin, and does not consider 
the sole object of its existence to be that its members may make 
merry — it is a rule that each, at every meeting, shall produce some 

* Once a year — on the first Saturday in July — there is a "country outing," 
when ladies as well as gentlemen are guests. Thus have been visited Oxford, 
Cambridge, Canterbury, Winchester, Windsor, St. Albans, and a score of other 
attractive cities and places. A brief historical and antiquarian paper is read on 
such occasions by one of the members. 



600 SOCIETY OF NOVIOMAGUS. 

object of antiquarian interest, to be handed round, explained, and 
commented upon, after the dinner. 

The period of my fullest love and honor for the society must 
therefore be dated back some years. For a long period it was a 
fruitful source of enjoyment to me, and in taking leave of the sub- 
ject of my connection with it I can, at least, say this — that in re- 
signing my seat to Dr. Richardson, I was succeeded in office by the 
man of all others I would have selected for that honor. May he 
hold it as long as I did — nearly a quarter of a century ! * 

Alas ! in carrying back my thoughts to the days of my earliest 
connection with the society, the mournful exclamation that forces 
itself from me is — 

"All, all are gone, the old familiar faces." 

The present hon. secretary is Henry Stevens, F. S. A. His pred- 
ecessors were George Godwin, F. S. A., and Frederick William Fair- 
holt, F. S. A. The hon. treasurer is Francis Bennoch, F. S. A. The 
principal duty of the secretary is to read at a meeting the " minutes " 
of the meeting preceding, to preserve a careful record of all the 
" jokes " — to make note of the various " curios " exhibited, and 
especially to misrepresent, as far as possible, what any member or 
guest had said. 

It is worth stating that four of the members are total abstainers : 
the Lord High President being one of the most powerful existing 
advocates of that " reform " — a physician in large practice, univer- 

* If the Society of Noviomagus is to be called a club (which I do not consider 
it), it is the only club of which I was a member — or very nearly that. I was indeed 
elected a member of St. Stephen's Club, and paid the entrance-fee and first year's 
subscription. When the year had expired, I was applied to by the secretary in the 
usual form for my second year's subscription, which I declined to pay — a decision, 
I told him, I did not think he would be surprised at when I added that I had 
never once been inside the club doors. My home was my club. I have followed 
the advice of Theodore Hook (how much happier would it have been for him if 
he had himself followed it !), that a married man should be "like Hercules, who, 
when he wedded Omphale, laid aside his club" 

" I have a truly feminine antipathy to clubs. The only women, I do believe, 
who tolerate them are those who are on bad or indifferent terms with their hus- 
bands, and are, consequently, very glad to be rid of them at all hours of the day 
or night. If you want a man to indulge in luxuries to which he has no right, be- 
cause he could not afford them at home, let him go to his club ; if he wishes to 
enjoy intercourse with a ' fast ' friend, without the healthy restraint of domestic 
habits, let him go to his club ; if he desires to win or lose more money at play 
than, as a prudent family man, he should do, let him go to his club. It is the 
man's first home : where his family live is but his second. He looks to the for- 
mer for his enjoyments, to the latter for his duties. It is all very well for pretty 
young wives to laugh and say the club keeps their husbands out of the way in the 
morning ; if not wooed to their home, they will in due time become ' club men ' — 
going one way while their wives go another. I don't like — I never shall like 
them : the club is the axe at the root of domestic happiness." — " A Woman s 
Story," Mrs. S. C. Hall. 



A MASONIC SIGN. 6oi 

sally respected, having the regard as well as respect of patients, many 
of whom are, in a Noviomagian sense — very profitable customers. 

On the 17th of January, 1883, it was my happy privilege to dine 
with the society as — then and now — its " Grand Patriarch." 

I quoted the lines of Moore — 

" When I remember all 

The friends long linked together, 
I've seen around me fall 
Like leaves in wintry weather." 

I did not add the lines — 

" I feel like one who treads alone 
Some banquet-hall deserted, 
Whose lights are fled, whose garlands dead, 
And all but he departed." 

The existing members — many of whom occupy high positions in 
letters and art — gave me the cordial greeting I anticipated, and was 
;tified in anticipating. 



justified in anticipating. 



Although the following incident might have been more " in place " 
in the chapter that details our tour to Germany, I must ask the read- 
er's permission to relate it. 

During our tour in Germany, we arrived late one evening, much 
fatigued, at Hoff, en route to Nuremberg. The hotel was full : so 
was the only other inn of the town. There was no possible chance 
of obtaining a sleeping-room — hardly any of getting food and drink. 
German landlords are proverbially rough and rude : mine host here 
was no exception to the rule — manifesting a disposition to turn us 
over to the elements outside. He had shown us, indeed, a huge 
apartment, in which there were eight beds, and told us we might 
occupy two of them, but laughed at the notion when I objected to 
the accommodation of the chamber being shared with six others — 
considering it, no doubt, an English prejudice. I was in despair ; saw 
that nothing was to be done except improvising places of rest on 
sofas or chairs, fully persuaded that such boons would be grudgingly 
granted. He protested against my indignant affirmation that cross 
his threshold into the street — I would not. A happy thought in- 
spired me : I gave him a Masonic sign. Instantly his face, attitude, 
and manner changed : he rushed up to me ; threw his arms round 
my neck, eagerly exclaiming, " Ya ! ya ! " kissed me on either cheek ; 
pulled me along a passage ; pushed me into a snug chamber, casting 
out the baggage of a guest who had pre-engaged it ; handed me a 
key as a signal that I was to adopt the motto of " No surrender," 
which, as Mrs. Hall was with me, I did not hesitate to do ; and not 
long afterward brought me with his own hands an exquisite supper, 
with some of the choicest vintage in his cellar. More than that : 
when I was leaving in the morning, he smilingly informed me that I 



602 "RHYMES IN COUNCIL." 

need be under no anxiety on my arrival at Nuremberg, where I 
might be assured of receiving another fraternal hug from the land- 
lord of the Rotter Ross, the most famous of all the inns of that re- 
nowned city. 

In 1 88 1 I published a small book, entitled "Rhymes in Council : 
Aphorisms versified " (Griffith & Farran), a series of one hundred 
and eighty-five little poems, each of which contains a rhymed maxim. 
I desired to dedicate the volume to the grandchildren of the Queen. 
On applying for sanction to do so, I received from Sir Henry Pon- 
sonby the gracious reply that " Her Majesty has much pleasure in 
giving her approval to the dedication." This was the preface to 
that — my latest if not my last — book : 

" Since these rhymes were written — while they were passing through the 
press — the partner of my pilgrimage, the participator in all my labors and 
cares, my companion, friend, counselor, and wife, during fifty-six years, has 
been removed from earth and from me, from many friends who dearly loved 
her, and from a public by whom she was largely appreciated since the publi- 
cation of her first book (followed by, I think, two hundred and fifty books) in 
the far-off year 1828. These verses are hardly less hers than mine. If I 
have striven — in humble, but fervent and prayerful, hope — to inculcate recti- 
tude, goodness, love, sympathy, gentle and generous thinking, humanity, pa- 
tience, virtue, and piety, Faith, Hope, and Charity — my work was suggested, 
encouraged, sustained — I will reverently add, inspired — by her. 

" This book, therefore, although written by me, I hope may be regarded 
as a Monument to her Memory." 

I think the foregoing is all of my personal history I need to give 
my readers : even so little is perhaps too much.* Nearly sixty- 
three years have passed since I began my career as a Man of Letters 
by profession. In the spring of 1822 I came to London from Ire- 
land, with few resources, or aids in fighting on the battle-field that 
lay before me, beyond those I might find in myself. " The world 
was all before me," and I 

" No revenue had 
But my good spirits." 

Were I to sit down deliberately to the task, and draw on my 
memory for material, I could add one more to the stories of early 
struggles endured by young men fighting their way to independence 
— through difficulties such as those over which Crabbe gloriously 
triumphed, to which Chatterton ignominiously succumbed. 

I have written all through this book under a strong impression — 
I might almost say conviction — that its publication would be post- 
humous j for I began it nearly six years ago. By God's blessing, 

* I need not say I shall be grateful to any person who will enable me to correct 
dates, or to remove any errors, of which, no doubt, there will be many in these 
volumes. 



FAREWELL. 603 

that foreboding does not seem likely to be realized when I close my 
task in the January of 1883. I hope I need not apologize for intro- 
ducing here my solemn " farewell " to those who are either my 
readers, or my friends — or both : 

" Through mist that hides the Light of God, I see 
A shapeless form : Death comes : and beckons me : 
But gives me glimpses of the summer land ; 

And, with commingled joy and dread, I hear 
The far-off whispers of a white-robed band. 

Nearer they come — yet nearer — yet more near. 
Is it rehearsal of a " welcome " song 
That will be in my heart and ear — ere long ? 
Do these bright spirits wait, till Death may give 
The Soul its franchise — and I die to live ? 

Does fancy send the breeze from yon green mountain ? 

(I am not dreaming when it cools my brow.) 
Are they the sparkles of an actual fountain 

That gladden and refresh my spirit now ? 
How beautiful the burst of holy light ! 
How beautiful the day that has no night ! 

Hark to these Alleluias I ' hail ! all hail ! ' 

Shall they be echoed by a sob and wail ? 

Friends ' gone before ' : I hear your happy voices, 

The old familiar sounds ! my Soul rejoices ! 

I know the words : they laud and thank The Giver, 

On the Heaven side of the Celestial River. 

Ha ! through the mist the great white throne I see : 
And now a Saint in glory beckons me. 
Is Death a foe to dread ? The Death who giveth 
Life — the unburthened Life that ever liveth ! 

Why shrink from Death ? Come when he will or may, 
The night he brings will bring the risen day. 
His call, his touch, I neither seek nor shun ; 
His power is ended when his work is done. 
My Shield of Faith no cloud of Death can dim : 
Death can not conquer me ! I conquer him ! 

How long, O Lord, how long, ere I shall see 

The myriad glories of a holier sphere ? 

And worship in Thy presence ? not, as here, 
In shackles that keep back the Soul from Thee ! 

My God ! let that Eternal Home be near ! 

Master ! I bring to Thee a Soul opprest, 
' Weary and heavy laden,' seeking rest : 
Strengthen my Faith, that, with my latest breath, 
I greet Thy messenger of Mercy — Death ! " 



INDEX. 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THINGS THAT HAVE BEEN. 



PAGE 

Ancient London 5 

Bartholomew Fair 19 

Battersea Fields 6 

Beards 52 

Blood-money 34 

Body-snatching 25 

Bow Street runners 3 

Branks 23 

Bribery at elections 14 

Brown Bess 46 

Catholic Relief Bill 15 

Champions of England 17 

Chloroform 9 

Clergymen 9 

Coachmen 7 

Coach-traveling 4 

Cock-fighting 20 

Colliery slaves 10 

Contested elections 14 

Courts of honor 28 

Cribb, Tom 16 

Criminal prisons 33 

Cross-road burials 26 

Cruelty to animals 15 

Debtors' prisons 29 

Dibdin's songs 46 

Dissenters out of Parliament 15 

Dog-fights 19 

Domestic servants 50 

Dress in old time 51 

Draconic statutes 20 

Drunkenness 42 

Ducking-stool 24 

Dueling 26 

Elections 13 

Executions 20 

Factory slaves 10 

Fleet marriages 29 

Flogging at cart's tail 23 

Footpads 5 

French prisoners 50 

Funerals* 40 

Graveyards 52 



PAGE 

Hackney-coaches 7 

Hair-powder 47 

Hanging in chains 24 

Hatred of the French 45 

House of Commons n 

House-tax 45 

Hustings 13 

Imported ice 9 

Imported water 9 

Imprisonment for debt 29 

India-rubber 9 

Insolvent Debtors' Act 30 

Jews out of Parliament 15 

Kensington Gardens 6 

King's Bench Prison 31 

Lighting by gas 2 

Link-boys 2 

London, Old 5 

Lunatic asylums, old 34 

Mail-coaches 3 

Mail-coach robberies 3 

Marshalsea 31 

Modern dress 51 

Music-halls 37 

Newspapers 8 

Oil-lamps 2 

Old admirals 50 

Old age 54 

Omnibuses 7 

Parliamentary reporting 1 r 

Pattens 7 

Penalties of insanity 35 

Photography 3 

Pigeon-shooting 20 

Pillions 6 

Pillory 21 

Police-guardians 3 

Poor debtors 30 

Press-gangs 48 

Prince Consort on dueling 28 

Printing 54 

Prisons 33 



6o6 



INDEX. 



Privateers 49 

Prize-fights 16 

Quakers 52 

Queues 47 

Railways 53 

Reform Bill 13 

Rotten boroughs 13 

Rules of the Bench 32 

Sales of wives 25 

Samaritans 35 

Scold's bridle 23 

Sea-captains 38 

Sea-voyages 8 

Sedan chairs 8 

Servants' clubs 50 

Smuggling 43 

Soldiers' dress 46 



Sponging-houses 30 

Stocks, The 22 

Strangers' Friend Society 35 

Strangers' gallery 12 

Suburban cemeteries 53 

Suicides 26 

Swearing 37 

Taxes 44 

Tea-gardens 6 

Telegraph 53 

Tinder-box 1 

Turnpike-gates 39 

Vauxhall 36 

Vigor in old age 54 

Wafers 8 

Wesleyan Methodists 51 

Young officers 55 



RECOLLECTIONS: THE NEWSPAPER PRESS, 1823-1S40. 



Advertisement tax 

"Age," The 

Alexander, Robert 

Anglo-Spanish Legion. 

Banim, John 

Bate, Rev. Henry 

Berkeley, Grantley 

" British Press," The. . 
Butt, G. M., Q. C 



Caroline, Queen 61, 

Collier, J. Payne 

Cost of letter-postage 

Crowe, Eyre Evans 

Cumberland, Duke of 

Dickens, Charles 

Disraeli 

Dodd, Charles R 

Donoughmore, Lord 

Eldon, Lord 

Father of the press, The 

Foscolo, Ugo 



Gregory, of the " Satirist " 

Hill, Rowland 

Hook, Theodore 67, 

House of Lords 

House of Commons 

Hutchinson, Colonel 

" John Bull," The 

Lavalette 



76 
67 
74 
61 

57 
67 
70 

63 
64 

70 
64 
78 

57 
75 

64 
7.1 
76 
62 

66 

76 

57 

67 

Si 

66 
65 
62 

70 

62 



Letters — 

illicit conveyance 78 

franking 80 

postages 78 

statistics 82 

Lockhart, J. G 73 

Maginn, William, LL. D 68 

Mahon 63 

" Morning Journal " 74 

Newspapers, old and modern 77 

Newspaper statistics * 77 

" tax 76 

'' New Times " 74 

' ' No Popery " 74 

Parliamentary reporting 64 

Pecchio, Count 58 

Peel, Sir Robert 74 

Pigot, Chief Baron 57 

Porro, Count 60 

Postage, shifts to avoid 79 

Reporters 64 

" Representative " The 72 

Roach, Eugenius 74 

" Satirist," The 67 

Stoddart, Dr 74 

Strangers' Gallery 65 

Taxes on knowledge 75, 77 

Transmission of news 78 

Westmacott, of the " Age " 67 

Wilson, Sir Robert 60 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE HOUSES OF LORDS AND 
COMMONS. 



Albert, Prince, H. R. H 171 

Althorp, Lord 119 

Beaconsfield, Earl of 161 

Brougham, Lord 105 



Burdett, Sir Francis 121 

Campbell, Lord 147 

Canning, George 89 

Carlisle, Earl of 12S 



INDEX. 



607 



Castlereagh, Lord 86 

Catholic Emancipation 98, 102 

Cobbett, William 135 

Croker, John Wilson 121 

Dalling, Lord 101 

Denman, Chief -Justice 146 

Eldon, Earl of 94 

Exhibition of 1851 129 

George IV 88 

Giants in both Houses 83 

Goderich, Lord 119 

Grey, Earl 118 

Grey, Sir George 124 

Hampton, Lord 129 

Herbert, Sidney 117 

Hobhouse, John Cam 123 

Holland, Lord 124 

Hume, Joseph 125 

Lawyers in the House 145 

Liverpool, Earl of 118 

Lyndhurst, Lord 102 

Lytton, Lord 150 

Macaulay, Lord 133 

Mackintosh, Sir J 119 



Manners Sutton 168 

Martin, Richard 130 

Melbourne, Lord 1 16 

Monteagle, Lord 120 

O'Connell, Daniel ^8 

Palmerston, Lord 108 

Parliament, the Queen's first 169 

Peel, Sir Robert 99, 1 1 1 

Plunkett, Lord 126 

Pollock, Chief Baron 147 

Prime Ministers 118 

Russell, Earl 132 

Scarlett, Sir J., Lord Abinger 146 

Sheil, Richard Lalor 142 

Stanley, Lord, Earl of Derby 127 

Stowell, Lord 95 

Test and Corporation Acts 133 

Victoria, H. M. Queen 171 

Wellington, Duke of 83 

Wetherell, Sir Charles 145 

Wilberforce, William in 

Wilde, Sergeant (Lord Truro) 147 

York, Duke of 98 



RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY EDITING. 



' ' Amulet, The " 1 76 

Annuals, The 1 76 

Bayly, Haynes 185 

" Book of British Ballads " 188 

" Britannia," The 187 

' ' British Magazine " 181 

Bulwer Lytton 182 

Campbell, Thomas 180 

Colburn, Henry 182 

Coulton 187 

Croker, John Wilson 186 

Dadd 188 

Editors' duties 179 

Forster, John 184 

Franklin, John 190 

Gilbert, Sir John 190 

Hall, Mrs. S. C 191 

Hill, Tom 185 



RECOLLECTIONS. 



" History of France " 179 

Hook, Theodore 183 

" John Bull," The 185 

Juvenile Annuals 178 

' ' Literary Observer " 192 

" Metropolitan," The 181 

" New Monthly," The 181 

Paton, Noel 189 

" Press," The 187 

Redding, Cyrus 181 

" St. James's Magazine " 191 

" Sharpe's London Magazine " 191 

" Social Notes " 193 

" Town Newspaper," The 186 

Twiss, Horace 1S6 

Ward, E. M 188 

" Watchman," The 187 



ITS ORIGIN AND 



American art 205 

"Art Journal " 199 

" " origin of 195 

Art Union of London 205 

British art, condition of 195 

British sculpture 196 



"ART JOURNAL: 
PROGRESS. 

Crusade against frauds 199 

Dafforne, James 206 



Fabrications 199 

Fairholt, F. W 206 

Farewell to the " Art Journal " 209 



6o8 



INDEX. 



Forgeries of pictures 200 

Fraudulent imitations 199 

Hart vs. Hall (libel) 200 

Hodgson, Mr 194 

Imported pictures 199 

Libel, trial for 200 

Modern artists 198 

Murray, Henry 206 



Old masters 203 

Patronage of British art 197 

Picture-sales 197, 203 

Prices of Pictures 197 

Rival publications 204 

Somerset House 199 

Vernon Gallery, The 205 



RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY ART MANUFACTURE. 



Albert, H. R. H. Prince 221 

Art decadence 213 

"Art Journal" 211 

Art manufactures 210 

Art progress 212,214 

An Union of London 212 

Borrowed art 211 

Covent Garden Bazaar 216 

Engravings 216 

Exhibition of 1844 1 15 

" " 1846 216 

" " 1851 218,220 



Exhibition at Manchester 216 

Granville, Earl 211 

Illustrated catalogues 218 

Pattison, Rev. Mark 212 

Paxton, Sir Joseph 220 

Poynter, E. J., R. A., on art 211 

Science and Art Department 213 

Testimonial from Birmingham 223 

Visits to manufacturing districts 213 



RECOLLECTIONS OF PARIS AND GERMANY IN 1831 AND 1850. 

Exhibition of 1867 231 

Fenimore Cooper 227 

Heideloff, Professor 238 

Kaulbach, William 237 

Lafayette 226 

Louis Philippe 235 

Napoleon III 232 



Ary Scheffer 234 

Beranger 230 

Blessington, Lady, in exile 231 

Bonheur, Rosa 240 

Cornelius 237 

Cuvier, Baron 229 

David d' Angers 229 

Delaroche, Paul 233 

Dore, Gustave 2 4 x 

Exhibition of 1853 231 



Rauch 238 

Retzsch, Moritz 238 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE ORIGIN OF SOME PUBLIC 
CHARITIES. 

Jerdan, William 257 

Klugh, G. W 252 

Laing, Rev. David and Mrs 249 

Lind, Jenny 244 

Nightingale, Florence 261 

Nightingale Fund 260 

Noel, Hon. and Rev. Baptist 254 

Pensioners' Employment Society 256 

Rose, Sir Philip 242 

Shaftesbury, Earl of 254 

Verney, Sir H. and Lady 267 

Walter, Captain 259 

Wilberforce, Bishop 254 



Bazaar at Chelsea 244 

Chiselhurst 251 

Concerts, The Goldschmidt's 266 

Corps of Commissionaires 258 

Cumming, W. E. D 257 

Dobbin, Henry 244, 262 

Early closing 252 

Goldschmidt, Otto 246 

Governesses' Benevolent Institution . . . 248 



Hall, Mrs. S. C 244, 246 

Herbert, Sidney 262, 267 

Home for Aged Governesses 250 

Hospital for Consumption 242 



INDEX. 



609 



RECOLLECTIONS OF THE REV. THEOBALD MATHEW. 



Carr, Rev. George 289 

Diminished crime 294 

Drunkenness 283 

Edgar, Rev. John 290 

Faction-fights 2S6 

Father Mathew — 

early labors 288 

work 290 

difficulties 296 

distribution of medals 298 

giving the pledge 292 

visit to America 293 

visit to Scotland 294 

death 301 

Foreign priests 271 

Gaugers 282 

Hell-Fire Club 284 

Horgan, Father Mat 270 

Illicit stills 282 



" Keens " 285 

Laws against Papists 275 

Manning, Cardinal 303 

Martin, William 290 

Maynooth College 271 

Murphy, Father 270 

O'Shea, Father 269 

Penal laws 273 

Priests' dwellings 279 

Protestant oppression 276 

Roman Catholic burials 281 

" " cathedrals 281 

" " chapels 278 

Social vice 285 

Testimonials 295 

Temperance reform 285 

Tithes 279 

Tithe-proctors 280 

Wakes and funerals 284 



RECOLLECTIONS OF AUTHORS I HAVE KNOWN. 



Aguilar, Grace 413 

Ainsworth, W. H 407 

Atherstone, Edwin 402 

Balfour, Clara 393 

Banim, John 402 

Barry Cornwall 318 

Barton, Bernard 412 

Bayly, Haynes 408 

Bentham, Jeremy 393 

Blanchard, Laman 399 

Blessington, Lady 367 

Book of Memories 304 

Bowles, Rev. Lisle 313 

Bowring, Sir John 408 

Bremer, Frederika 371 

Britton, John 408 

Broderip, Frances Freeling 341 

Browning, Robert 336 

Carleton, William 365 

Carlyle, Thomas 363 

Cary, Henry Francis 318 

Clare, John 409 

Clarke, Rev. Adam 415 

Coleridge, S. T 305 

Colton, Rev. C. C 372 

Cooper, Fenimore 420 

Cox, Sergeant 374 

Crabbe, George 315 

Croly, Rev. George 385 

Cunningham, Allan 400 

De Quincey, Thomas 30S 

Dickens, Charles 394 

D'Orsay, Count 369 

39 



Edgeworth, Maria 359 

Elliott, Ebenezer 409 

Eyre, Governor 363 

Fry, Elizabeth 330 

Gilman, Mrs 305 

Godwin, William 313 

Griffin, Gerald 416 

Hall, Rev. Robert 415 

Hallam, Henry 359 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel 420 

Hazlitt, William 318 

Hemans, Felicia 336 

Hofland, Barbara 348 

Holman r James 374 

Hone, William 320 

Hood, Thomas 340 

Hood, Thomas (the younger) 342 

Howitt, William 377 

Howitt, Mary 379 

Hunt, Leigh 390 

Irving, Rev. Edward 311 

Irving, Washington 421 

Jameson, Mrs 402 

Jerdan, William 399 

Jerrold, Douglas 399 

Jewsbury, The Sisters 389 

Kitto, John 372 

Knowles, Sheridan 3S8 

Lamb, Charles 316 

Landon, Letitia 395 

Landor, Walter Savage 333 

Le Fanu, Joseph ....... ... 383 



6io 



INDEX. 



Longfellow, Henry W 419 

Lover, Samuel 380 

MacCarthy, D. F 351 

Mahoney, Frank 382 

Marryat, Captain 401 

Martineau, Harriet 328 

Maturin, Rev. Charles 384 

Milman, Rev. H. H 360 

Mitford, Mary Russell 404 

Montagu, Basil 319 

Montgomery, James 412 

Montgomery, Robert 414 

Moore, Thomas 351 

More, Hannah 403 

Morgan, Lady 344 

Norton, Hon. Mrs 386 

Opie, Amelia 410 

Palisser, Mrs. Bury 401 

Phillips, Charles 384 

Porter, Jane 386 

Porter, Anna Maria 387 



Porter, Sir Robert Ker 387 

Procter, B. W 318 

Procter, Adelaide 319 

Punshon, Rev. Morley 416 

Rogers, Samuel 370 

Ruskin, John 304 

Senior, Mrs. Nassau 347 

Sigourney, Mrs 421 

Sinclair, Catherine 349 

Smith, Horace 370 

Smith, James 370 

Smith, Sydney 359 

Southey, Robert 321 

Talfourd, Sergeant 310 

Tennyson, Alfred 419 

Walsh, Dr. Edward 418 

Walsh, Rev. Robert 418 

Walsh, John Edward 418 

Watts, Alaric 377 

Willis, N. P 421 

Wordsworth, William 324 



RECOLLECTIONS OF ARTISTS I HAVE KNOWN. 



Bates, William 427 

Behnes, William 441 

Burlowe, Henry Behnes 441 

Cruikshank, George 438 

Cunningham, Allan 434 

Dickens, Charles 428 

Durham, Joseph 443 

Eastlake, Sir C. L 425 

Edwards, Joseph 443 

Elmore, Alfred 43° 

Faraday, Michael 434 

Flaxman, John 439 

Foley, Peggy 440 

Foley, John Henry 441 

Gibson, John 440 

Hart, Solomon Alex 435 

Haydon, B. R 4 2 7 

Linnell, John 431 

Lough, John Graham 443 



Maclise, Daniel 427 

Martin, John 434 

MGller, W. J 432 

Mulready, William 429 

Powers, Hiram 440 

Prout, Samuel 423, 426 

Ruskin, John 427 

Sculptors 439 

Shee, Sir M. A 435 

Stanfield, Clarkson 437 

Stephens, E. B 443 

Turner, J. M. W 224 

Varley 423 

Vernon, Robert 431, 435 

Ward, E. M 436 

Ward, Mrs. E. M 436 

Wheatstone, Sir Charles 434 

Wilkie, David 424 



RECOLLECTIONS OF ACTORS I HAVE KNOWN. 



Barnett, Morris 448 

Braham, John 448 

Braham, Mrs 448 

Faucit, Helen 45 2 

Forster, John 453 

Kean, Edmund 445 

Kean, Charles 447 

Keeley, Mrs. (Mary Goward ) 447 

Kemble, John 445 

Macready, William 453 

Macready, Mrs 453 

Mathews, Charles 45° 



Mathews, Charles (the younger) 451 

O'Neill, Miss 452 

Power, Tyrone 449 

Reed, Mrs. German (Miss P. Horton). . 447 

Roche, Alexander 447 

Sala, Madam 448 

Siddons, Mrs 445 

Stephens, Kitty (Countess of Essex). . . 457 

Waldegrave, Countess (Fanny Braham) 448 

Yates, Frederick 451 

Young, Charles 452 



INDEX. 



6n 



RECOLLECTIONS OF SCOTLAND. 



Allan, Sir William 466 

Ben Lomond 462 

Ben Nevis 463 

Bonnie Doon 465 

Burns, Colonel J. G 468 

Burns, Colonel W. N 468 

Burns Festival, The 468 

Burns Family, The 467 

Cameron, Sir Alex 461 

Caruthers, Robert 460 

Chalmers, Dr 466 

Chambers, Robert 464, 472 

Chambers, William 464, 473 

Clachan of Aberfoil 465 

Drummossie Moor 465 

Glenfinnan 460 



Harvey, Sir George 466 

Hogg, James 470 

Maclan, R. R 460 

Macintosh 462 

MacNee, Sir John 466 

Melrose 465 

Moir, D. M 467 

Pibroch, The 461 

Prestonpans 464 

Rob Roy's country- 463 

Scottish authors 467 

Scottish artists 466 

Scottish scenes 465 

Wilson, Professor 469 



RECOLLECTIONS OF IRELAND: TWENTY— FORTY- 
YEARS AGO. 



-SIXTY 



Abductions 489 

Absentees 495 

Agents 498 

Agrarian outrages 494, 502 

Agriculture 491 

Assassinations 519 

Beggars 529 

Bianconi 480 

" Bit of land " 502 

Cabins 482 

Car-drivers 501 

Catholic Relief Bill 515, 526 

Charter schools 510 

Cities and towns 517 

Constabulary 524 

Corporate bodies 539 

Cotters 484 

Courts of justice 513 

Crossing the Channel 478 

Crossing the Menai Strait 478 

Dispensaries 532 

Domestic quarrels 510 

Drunkenness 506, 525 

Dublin in 1817 518 

Early marriages 489 

Emigration 536 

Encumbered Estates Courts 516 

Evictions 495 

Faction-fights 525 

Foster, Thomas Campbell 502, 546 

Grand juries 513 

Hall, Colonel 476 

Hatred of England inculcated 539 

Hedge-schools 506 

Henry Mitchell, M. P 492 



Holyhead 

Houses of the gentry 

Informers 

Injustice to Ireland 

Inns, Irish 

" Ireland, its Scenery and Character' 

Irishmen 

Irishwomen 

Itinerant dealers 

Judges 

Kennedy, Colonel Pitt 

Macaulay, Dr 

Mails 

Massacre of the Sheas 

Menai Bridge 

Middlemen 



National schools 

National resources 

Neglected fisheries 

Neglected land 

" No Irish need apply " 

O'Hagan, Lord 484, 

Old schools 

Over-population 

Packing juries 513, 

Parliament, the Irish 

Peel, Sir R 

Pigs, Connaught 

Police 

Poor laws 

Poor scholars 

Poverty 

Prices of provisions 

Printing-press 

Private banks 



478 
487 

521 

544 
500 

477 
489 
4SS 
481 

5i3 
498 

542 
479 
520 
47S 
493 
50S 

503 
492 
490 

477 

513 
506 

495 

517 
512 
5i5 
485 
523 
527 
508 

483 
481 

537 
490 



6l2 



INDEX. 



PAGE 

Process-servers 522 

Proselytizing 538 

Prosperity in store 547 

Railways 537 

Repeal of the Union 532 

Savings-banks 489 

Schools 509 

Sealing money 488 



Squireens 486 

Sullivan, A. M 509 

Tithes 494, 505 

Traveling in Ireland 480 

Trench, Stuart 498 

Wages 481 

Workhouses 528 

Writs 522 



RECOLLECTIONS OF MRS. S. C. HALL. 



Addlestone , 583 

Anniversaries of wedding 578 

Bands of Hope 555 

Bannow 549 

Birth in Dublin 548 

Birthday letter, the last 576 

Books, her many 552 

' ' Boons and Blessings " 557 

' ' Buccaneer, The " 569 

Burial at Addlestone 583 

Carr, George 548 

Children's books 570 

Crosland, Mrs. Newton 583 

Dress, her views on 570 

" Drunkard's Bible " 557 

Fielding, Mrs 549 

Forced blooms 564 

" Friendless and fallen " 562 

Graige 549 

Huguenot descent 549 

Immortality 575 

Markley, John T 573 

Marriage 550 



Martin, Lady (Helen Faucit) 573 

Memorial to the Queen 555 

Memoriam, In 575 

Memory, Her 572 

Novels, Her 569 

' ' Old Story, An " 554 

" Pilgrimages to English Shrines " 568 

Precocious children 565 

Reviews of books 553 

" Rhymes in Council " 561 

Sensitiveness 570 

Servants, domestic 563 

" Sketches of Irish Character " 551 

Spiritualism 579 

Street music 567 

Temperance, labors for 553 

Thanksgiving ! 553 

' ' Trial of Sir Jasper " 554 

Tributes to her memory 575 

Wedding-day, twentieth 578 

" fiftieth 577 

" fifty-sixth 578 

Woman's rights 558 



RECOLLECTIONS: PERSONAL. 



Bartlett, Rev. Mr 591 

Birth, My 584 

Browne, Major 589 

Colors, restoration of the 591 

Copper-mines 585 

Devon and Cornwall Fencibles 585 

Farewell ! 603 

Freemasonry in Germany 601 

French in Bantry Bay 593 

Geneva Barracks 584 

Golden wedding 596 

Hall, Colonel 585 

Hall, Revis 589 

Hall, Robert R 589 



Hall, William Sanford 589 

Incident in a life 594 

Keating, Major 591 

Loneliness of a city 595 

Mining speculations 587 

Mother, My 5^8 

Noviomagus, Society of 598 

Rebellion of 1798 592 

" Rhymes in Council ". . . • 602 

Richardson, B. W 599 

Testimonial in 1874 595 

Topsham 589 

Trafalgar 59° 

Vernon, Robert 597 



THE END. 




fe^ Itt3 



» 



WORKS ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 



The Life of His Royal Highness the Prince Consort. 

By Sir Theodore Martin. Fifth and concluding volume. 1 vol., 12mo. Cloth, 
$2.00. Vols. I, II, III, and TV, at same price per volume. 

" The literature of England is richer by a book which will be read with profit by suc- 
ceeding generations of her sons and daughters."— Blackwood. 

'• Sir Theodore Martin has completed his work, and completed it in a manner which 
has fairly entitled him to the honor conferred upon him on its conclusion. It is well done 
from beginning to end."— Spectator. 

A History of England 

In the Eighteenth Century. By William Edward Hartpole Leckt, author of 

" History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe," 

" History of European Morals, from Augustus to Charlemagne," etc. Vols. 

I to IV. Large 12mo. Cloth, $2.25 each. 

"No more important book has appeared of late years than this history, uniting as it 
does so engrossing a subject with so vital an object. . . . We say, again, that Mr. Lecky 
has made his mark upon our time by his careful and fascinating book."— New York Times. 

History of England, 

From the Accession of James II. By Lord Macaclay. New and standard edi- 
tion. With Steel Portrait. 5 vols., 12mo. Cloth, extra, per set, $5.00. 

The English Reformation : 

How it came about, and why we should uphold it. By Cunningham Geikie, D. D., 
author of " The Life and Words of Christ." With a Preface by the author 
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